LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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The Children and the Church, 



THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S 



SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR, 



MEANS OF BRINGING THEM TOGETHER, 



F. E. CLARK, 

Pastor of the Williston Church, Portland, Me.; 
Author of " Our Vacations" and "Life of William E. Harward." 



With an Introduction by 

C. L. GOODELL, D. D., 

Pastor of t/ie Pilgrim Church, St. Louis, Mo. 







BOSTON: 

CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL AND PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 
BEACON STREET. 



73 //^ 



Copyright, 1SS2, 
BY CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY. 




Stereotyped and Printed 

BY ALFRED MUDGE AND SON, BOSTON. 



TO THE MANY MEMBERS 

OF THE 

TOlistoK gomtg Jwple's gorietg of Christian (BnbeH&or, 

WHO HAVE 

SO OFTEN LIGHTENED THEIR PASTOR'S LABORS, 

AfD 

CHEERED THEIR PASTOR'S HEART, 

THIS BOOK 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



PREFATORY 



Some time ago a chance article published in the Con- 
gregationalist, entitled " How One Church looks after its 
Young People," describing the methods of the Society of 
Christian Endeavor, was received with considerable favor, 
and was republished in various papers in this country and 
abroad. This article unexpectedly brought to the author 
many letters asking for further particulars. To these he 
responded as fully as his time would permit, while he tried 
to reply to them at greater length by other articles in 
various religious newspapers. The correspondence, how- 
ever, soon grew quite beyond his ability to furnish careful 
replies, and this opened up the whole question of Christian 
nurture as a practical matter. It became evident that there 
was, among pastors and other Christian workers, a wide- 
spread desire for any light, however feeble, which might be 
shed on the relation of children to the church. This little 
book is an attempt to answer the questions thus raised, and 
to solve the problems suggested, by stating, as clearly as 
possible, the needs and difficulties in the way of Christian 
nurture, and by presenting a practical plan to accomplish 
this end which in many cases has proved successful. In 
the sixth chapter, many questions which have been ad- 



VI PREFATORY. 

dressed to the author have been considered in a more 
thorough manner than could be done in private corre- 
spondence, and it is hoped that these answers may be of 
some service to many others who have not written him 
upon the subject. The Young People's Society of Chris- 
tian Endeavor is in no sense a sectarian organization. 
One of the first societies established, after the first article 
before alluded to appeared, was in a large Baptist church 
in Connecticut. Many have been started in Methodist, 
Free Baptist, Baptist, and Presbyterian as well as Congre- 
gational churches. It is hoped that no denominational 
lines will interfere with this method of bringing children 
and young people into the service. The author wishes to 
acknowledge his indebtedness to Edersheim's " Social Cus- 
toms of the Jews in the Time of Christ," to the " Bible 
Educator," to Dr. Bushnell's " Christian Nurture," to Dr. 
Cuyler for the earliest suggestion of this method of reach- 
ing the young, and to many of his brethren for their 
cordial sympathy and helpful counsel. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. p AGE 

Jewish Customs respecting Child Life. — Different Names applied 
to Children. — The Naturalness of Child Life in the Bible. 

— Bible Child Life a Religious Life. — The Religious Life 

of the Child a Growth. — A Word to Parents I 

CHAPTER II. 

IS THERE A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN ? 

Jerusalem full of Boys and Girls playing. — A Place for Children 
in the Church. — Indicated by the Nature of Childhood. — 
By the Nature of Conversion. — By the Nature of the Church. 

— The Church of the Future 15 

CHAPTER III. 

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 

The Need of it. — Shown by the Sluggish, Depleted State of our 
Churches. — The Difficulty of Impressing with Religious 
Truth Persons of Mature Years. — Obstacles. — Opposition 
and Indifference of Parents, Teachers, and Churches. — "I 
am afraid my Child will not Hold Out." — Unreasonable 
Expectations. — Encouragement. — Experience of Eminent 
Divines 27 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 

Its Origin. — Its Constitution. — Its Objects: To Promote Con- 
stant Confession of Christ and Earnest Christian Endeavor. 

— Its Spirit : The Spirit of Aggressive, Spiritual, Evangel- 
ical Christianity. — Its Rules : Are they too Strict ? . . . 38 



Vlll CONTENTS. 



■ CHAPTER V. P AGB 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 

How it fits Children for Church Membership. — A Half-Way 
House to the Church. — A Training School within the 
Church. — A Watch-Tower for the Church 52 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 

Questions Answered. — How can the Society be Started? — 
What Age Limit shall be Imposed ? — Is this Plan fitted for 
Small, Weak Churches ? — What does "Absolute Necessity " 
mean ? — How should an Experience Meeting be conducted ? 

— Why should the Roll be called at its Close ? — What other 
Work may be attempted. — How shall the Indifferent be 
dealt with ? Suggestions. — Care in admitting Members. 

— Strict Adherence to the Rules. — Constant Vigilance 
needed. — The Pastor's Place in this Work an Essential 
Place. Objections Answered. — That the Society will 
detract from the Pre-eminence of the Church. — That it will 
interfere with the Church Prayer Meeting. — That it will 
foster a Brazen, Wordy Type of Piety 63 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 

Further Misapprehensions corrected. — The Object not only to 
awaken, but to keep awake. — Not to make Children Prom- 
inent, but to make them Useful. — Further Questions an- 
swered. — " How may Interest in Religious Matters be first 
aroused?" — The Sunday-School Prayer Meeting. — A Cat- 
echetical Class. — This Society not a Labor-Saving Contriv- 
ance. — A Flexible Organization. — What has been done. — 
What may be done 78 



CONTENTS. IX 



APPENDIX. Pagb 
Children and Public Worship. — The Veneration of the Ancient 
Jews for their Temple. — The Statistics about Church-Going. 
— Why are not the Children in the Pews ? — Testimony of 
Representative Christian Men of Portland concerning early 
Church-Going. — What this Testimony teaches. — To win 
Boys and Girls to Public Worship. First, Understand them. 
Second, Be manly. Third, Present the Youth's Side of Truth. 
Fourth, Give a new Bent to much of the Home Life. 
Fifth, Modify many prevailing Theories regarding the Con- 
version of Children. Sixth, Continue the Revision of much 
Sunday-School Effort. Seventh, Appreciate the joyous Hope- 
fulness of a Church full of Children 91 



INTRODUCTION". 



Here is a good thing for the church of Christ, for the 
Christian home, and for all that have the care of the 
young. You will not lay it aside till you have gathered the 
honey. 

The plan is a fresh seed, dropped into the new soil of 
youth, and promises much. In the fields of the young 
there is no fallow ground ; everything grows in the spring- 
time, wheat and tares. 

This book is born of an earnest effort to keep the young 
within reach of direct Christian influence, bringing them to 
Christ, and into His fold ; rearing them, not for His service, 
but in it, leaving no time nor place for " sowing wild oats." 

The guides of youth have made provision for these 
oats much too long. 

The book is neither a plea for Christian nurture without 
conversion, nor for conversion without nurture, — looking 
: ward the work outside the church 01 apart from it, — but 
for planting and training the young in the household of 
faith in a living, practical way. 

The child problem is one of the most pressing at this 
hour. Mammon has no happy old people, however much 
delight he may promise the boys and girls at the start. 
They follow, to be deceived and destroyed. It is very hard 
for God to get a hearing in any human heart, yet it is 
easier to reach the child heart than any other. Lose not 
the hour of childhood. 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

The consequences of sin in this world, and in every 
world, are fearful. The sooner the child life is cleansed, 
through the blood of the Crucified One, and the new life 
from above is begun, the better every way; God has no 
sorrow so great as seeing a soul in sin. He comes with 
His deliverance now, if we will open to Him. He is of God 
who heareth the words of God. 

How can the young be made to see the vast advantages 
that surround them, and be led to improve their opportu- 
nities as they ought ? 

No question comes to parents of this generation with 
deeper solicitude than this, — unlimited stores of knowl- 
edge on every side, privileges and blessings for mind and 
heart without end, and often so little appetite on the part 
of the children for them. Parents lead their young to the 
fountains of living water ; everything is made beautiful and 
attractive, and still they do not care to drink. How shall 
they be induced to ? What can be done if there is no 
hunger for life's true knowledge, no thirst for God's word 
and service ? 

Blessings on him who shall impart the teaching skill, 
and give the relish for divine things, and know how to feed 
the lambs. 

Every boy has his time to awake and grow to a wise, 
Christian manhood; every girl her opportunity to rise 
and put on her garments of Christian beauty, and begin 
her ministry of love and helpfulness. This time gone 
unimproved, life's best hour is passed. This era in child 
life comes and goes as the clover blossoms, and then heat 
and drought and waste. The summer is ended. The 
bright, sweet song of the Gospel has been sung to the soul ; 
all that follow are broken lays. The young need to be 
taken in this early bloom, set into the life of God, that 



INTRODUCTION. Xlii 

they may be enclosed in His gardens, and kept fragrant 
and fresh forever. The sun puts its finger on the bud of 
a tender plant and it flowers, so let Christ lay His hand on 
the plants in the home. 

" In the kingdom of Thy grace 
Grant a little child a place." 

The children must have their portion at home and in 
the Lord's house. It must be constant and wholesome 
and "convenient" for them. "If we would have better 
sheep, we must take better care of the lambs " ; we must 
make a place for them in confession of Christ and service, 
in worship and work, in giving and doing. Let the Chris- 
tian duties all begin in childhood, when faith and love be- 
gin. The young repay many fold for all the thought and 
care bestowed upon them by the church. It is the divine 
order and method, old and young moving together along 
the homeward way. It helps to keep the parental heart 
and hearthstone warm. The children gathered into the 
worship make the church like a Christian service, glad 
with song and promise and youthful joy all the year round. 

And why should it not be so ? 

When the great Shepherd comes to draw water for His 
flock on the Lord's day, how good it is to find all the fold 
gathered and ready, sheep and lambs alike. The Lord's 
ministry is to them both, in invitation and blessing. He 
carries every kind of food in the same hand. 

The old are twice blessed in the blessing on the young. 
Many a little girl is a Christian at four years of age. Many 
a boy at seven ; some earlier. " Feed my lambs," says the 
Master. Arrange to do it by system and in faith • gather 
them in, carry the weak ones. Let the truth be unsealed 
and applied to all their needs. In no other way can so 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

effective and valuable Christian workers be made. All 
their faculties, taken early, will be limbered and made flexi- 
ble and deft in their Lord's use. 

Do not let us of this age stumble any longer over these 
great and self-evident truths. Every work has its special 
wisdom by which it is best done. The secret of success in 
winning the world for Christ and building the church of 
God is in gaining and saving the children. That done, 
all the rest comes as a consequence ; for the world's man- 
hood is secure when we have gained its childhood. 

The state of the heart toward God determines one's 
moral condition. That state may be made right in child- 
hood easier than at any other time thereafter. If the 
heart should with difficulty be brought to God later, the 
aftermath of the autumn Christian is not like the abound- 
ing green of the early summer time. 

Why should Christian parents wait, before they strive to 
make their children Christians, till there has been a funeral 
among the group of little ones ? Why should the pastor's 
first prayer in the home be at the bedside of the sick ? 

The method set forth in this volume is no longer an 
experiment. It has been very successfully tried by the 
author, and by many others, who, adopting the suggestions 
of the author, are happy to attest their great practical 
value. 

The Society of Christian Endeavor, brought from Port- 
land to St Louis without injury, is one of the busiest bees 
in the Pilgrim hive. It brings in honey and comb, and 
finds many wayside flowers that had been overlooked. 
It comes in every day rich with golden power. It is one 
of the special helps to the pastor. It is wings for him, 
and flies all over the city. 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

This work is not intended to be a mere sentiment or 
theory thrown out, but a working plan for organization and 
use in every church where it shall find favor, till it gives 
place to something better. 

C. L. GOODELL. 

St, Louis, November, 1882. 



THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHILD LIFE IN THE- BIBLE. 

Jewish Customs respecting Child Life. — Different Names ap- 
plied to Children. — The Naturalness of Child Life in the 
Bible. — Bible Child Life a Religious Life. — The Religious 
Life of the Child a Growth. — A Word to Parents. 

In considering the relation of children to the 
church, and in attempting to devise measures for 
bringing young people into closer relationship and 
fellowship with the church, it is wise for us to con- 
sider first of all the Bible position in regard to the 
religious nurture of children. This is not a difficult 
task, for the Scriptures leave no doubt in the minds 
of most readers in regard to the supreme importance 
they attach to the early and careful religious training 
of the young. The Bible treats child life as it does 
every other subject, in accordance with the customs 
in vogue at the time it was written ; and from its gen- 
eral tenor, we have every reason to suppose that it 
approves and supports these existing customs. Thus, 
in order fitly to appreciate the child life of the Bible, 
we must inquire how children were regarded, what was 



2 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

their education, and how much attention was paid to 
them by the Jews, the people among whom the Bible 
was written. When we turn to this subject we are 
surprised to find how large is its literature. The very- 
number and variety and minuteness of the names 
for "child" show the importance of child life, and 
the close scrutiny with which it was watched. There 
were no less than nine of these names, denoting the 
different stages of the child's history. Besides the 
general names for son or daughter, there was one that 
meant "the newly born" child, another that meant 
"the suckling," another still that referred to the 
time just before weaning, and a fourth that meant 
the weaned child. When he becomes a little older 
and begins to go alone with short and tottering steps, 
he is called tapJi> or "the quickly stepping one," — 
or " the little trotter," as we might phrase it. When 
he becomes still older, and is able to help his par- 
ents, he is called elem, or " the strong." When able to 
defend and take care of himself, he is naar, or " free " ; 
and when he has attained his majority and is fit for 
military service, then he is bachur, or "matured," 
— " the ripe one." What a watchful eye do all these 
names indicate ! By following them along we can 
almost see the development and growth of the Jew- 
ish youth and maiden. Immediately after the birth 
of the child it was washed, rubbed with salt, and 
wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and the announcement 
of its birth was hailed with joy, especially if it was a 
son. When the boy was eight days old he received 
his name, and the rite of circumcision was performed. 



CHILD LITE Ds THE BIBLE. 3 

Twenty-two days after this his father redeemed him 
by giving to the priest thirty shekels of the sanc- 
tuary, thus acknowledging in a most forcible way 
that he belonged to the Lord who gave him. The 
ceremony of redemption was performed in this way : 
The parents of the month-old child made a feast for 
their friends, and invited a priest, who must be a lin- 
eal descendant of Aaron. Having offered grace and 
some introductory prayers, the priest looks at the 
child and at the price of redemption, and asks the 
father which he would prefer, the money or the child. 
Upon the father's reply that he would rather pay the 
price of redemption, the priest takes the money and 
swings it round the infant's head, saying, " This is 
for the first-born ; this is in lieu of it ; this redeems 
it. And let this son be spared for life, for the law of 
God, and for the fear of heaven." The priest then 
lays his hand upon the child's -head and blesses 
him, and the rite is over. Does not this custom, as 
some one* has remarked, bring to us with new 
force the Apostle Peter's words, ■ Ye know that 
ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, is 
with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of 
Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot " ? 
When the child was weaned the event was cele- 
brated by a feast given by the parents to their 
friends, and when he had become the " quickly step- 
ping" little one he was dressed in the fringed or 

* Rev. Dr. Ginsbnrg, from whose writings many of these facts, con- 

; :- r : .t ur :"g:rg c: ~z~:i':. c-^rtr., hzve iter. :b:air.ed. 



4 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

tasselled garment : and now his religious educa- 
tion began, for he was taught that the word which 
stood for this tasselled garment was the Hebrew 
numeral for six hundred, and that this six hundred, 
with the eight threads and five knots that composed 
the tassels, made up six hundred and thirteen, the 
number of precepts in the law ; and hence the tas- 
selled garment in which the little boy was arrayed 
was a symbol to him of the perfect law. During the 
earliest period of the child's life the mother had his 
training solely in her hands ; but when the boy be- 
came a little older the father undertook his religious 
teaching, while the mother was responsible for the 
girls until they were married. 

At the age of five the boy began to learn the Bible, 
and at the age of ten the collection of Jewish tradi- 
tions. The parents were the teachers, and it is a sin- 
gular fact that we read of no schools in the Bible 
until after the Babylonish captivity. The reason for 
this is plain Before this there was no need of 
them, for during a sixth part of a Jew's time, labor 
was prohibited by Sabbaths and sacred feasts, and 
this time the parents occupied in teaching their chil- 
dren. But when the Jewish father came to resemble 
the modern Christian father, so much wrapped up in 
his business that he had no time to teach his chil- 
dren, then schools were established, but under the 
strictest regulations. They must not be in a crowded 
or unwholesome part of the town ; they must not be 
near a river that was crossed by an unsafe bridge ; 
no teacher could have more than twenty-five pupils 



CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. 5 

under his charge ; and the parents always took care 
that their children were in the class at the proper 
time. In these schools, too, the greatest attention 
was paid to the manners of the children. They must 
salute every one they met on the street, and not to 
respond to a salutation was considered as bad as com- 
mitting a robbery. An ordinary man was greeted 
with the words, " Peace be with thee ! " a teacher, 
" Peace be with thee, my teacher and my master" ; 
and a king, "Peace be with thee, my king, peace." 
Compare this polite greeting with the impertinent 
stare or the saucy salutation of many a modern 
school-boy. 

We have dwelt somewhat at length on these Jewish 
customs in the upbringing of children, for more than 
anything else do they throw light upon the child life 
of the Bible. In fact, the child life of the Jews is 
the child life approved and moulded by the Bible. 
The same rites that we have described were per- 
formed for Samuel and Saul and David. In this 
same fringed garment was the little Solomon clothed, 
and the infant Isaiah and Daniel. These same pre- 
cepts were taught in this way to Paul and Peter and 
John and James. These same salutations dropped 
from the lips of Timothy, so carefully trained. Yes, 
and these same blessings were pronounced over the 
unconscious head of the infant Jesus. In the same 
garment was He clothed. He was taught this same 
rule concerning the knots and fringes, and in sweet, 
boyish accents, we may believe, there fell from His 
lips, too, the quaint greeting, " Peace be with thee, 



6 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

my teacher and master, peace." Surely anything 
that throws light upon or is glorified by His blessed 
life is of supreme interest to us. We have a few- 
examples of child life recorded in the Bible. Some- 
thing is told us of Joseph as a boy. Samuel's early 
days are dwelt upon. Allusions are made to the 
infancy of Josiah and a few of the kings of Judah ; 
and the door of that carpenter's house in Naza- 
reth is occasionally left ajar, that we may get brief 
glimpses of the blessed child life of Jesus. From 
these few passages, as well as from what we know 
of the customs of the times, we learn in the first 
place that the child life of Bible characters and 
Bible days was natural and sensible. The goody, pre- 
cocious, unearthly children, who are always saying 
such wonderful things, and never giving any evi- 
dence of having inherited the ! weaknesses of Adam's 
race, and who always used to die before they ad- 
vanced beyond this stage of pious and precocious 
reflection, do not exist in the Bible. The children 
of the Bible are pre-eminently childlike. There 
is nothing about them which leads us to believe 
that to be " saintly towards the heavens is to be 
sickly tdwards the earth." While they are children, 
they speak as children, they understand as children, 
they think as children ; it is not until they become 
men that they put away childish things. A study 
of their lives gives us the impression that it is just 
as unnatural and unwholesome for a child to act like 
a man as for a man to act like a child. Indeed, it was 
part of the educational code of the Jews that the 



CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. 7 

child was not to be forced. One of their sententious 
maxims was, " If you set your child to regular study 
before it is six years old, you shall always have to 
run after and yet never get hold of it." 

Look at the story of the infant Samuel, for ex- 
ample. How perfectly natural, simple, childlike it 
is ! And yet a miraculous event occurred. God 
himself is one of the speakers. There is every 
temptation for the writer to make the little boy pre- 
ternatural in wisdom. Many a modern writer de- 
scribing the scene would have made him talk more 
wisely than Eli himself. But the pen of inspiration 
never makes such mistakes. The child is still a child 
even when he talks with God. As we follow the 
story of that marvellous night of vision, we do not 
find anything strained, unnatural, precocious in it all. 
Here, if anywhere, should we expect a departure from 
childlike simplicity ; and yet Samuel, in spite of his 
visions and early prophetic gifts, was a simple, nat- 
ural boy. And when we turn over the pages of 
sacred story, and turn with them the leaves of twelve 
hundred years of the world's history, we see nothing 
in that perfect child life, which began in the manger 
and was continued in Nazareth, that contradicts our 
proposition that child life in the Bible is natural and 
simple. 

It becomes us to speak with care and reverence of 
the immaculate life of the child Jesus, and yet we 
challenge any one to find there anything inconsistent 
with the boy nature that He is represented as endued 
with. Even that scene in the temple where He is 



8 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

shown to us at twelve years of age as both hearing 
the doctors and asking them questions is not so 
unnatural as we are inclined to think. Every Jewish 
child from a devout family was well trained in the law, 
and had a right in the synagogue to ask his elders 
questions, or to give them his views ; but it was all 
done in a natural, childlike, appropriate way. The 
conceited Josephus tells us that the doctors came 
to consult him concerning the law before he was 
fourteen ; but we hear no such boast concerning 
Jesus. And this action of our Lord's did not seem 
to fill His parents with any wonder or awe, for they 
immediately began to chide Him in their short-sighted 
wisdom for eluding their search. The Apocryphal 
Gospels are filled with the miracles of the boy Jesus. 
According to them He made clay birds to fly, and 
struck a little companion dead for blasphemy, and 
raised the dead to life again. But their very unnat- 
uralness brands them as spurious. When we compare 
them with the sweet, simple, unostentatious accounts 
of the true Gospels, we see how incomparably better 
it is for a child to be a child. We see that even 
the Lord of all, when He took human flesh, did not 
transgress the laws of child life. 

But again, while child life in the Bible is eminently 
simple and natural, it is also eminently religious. 
These two elements must not be divorced in our 
minds, if we would see the children of the next gen- 
eration grow up into the kingdom of God. A reli- 
gious life, a life of faith and prayer, a Christ-like life, 
is natural for a child, and we make a woful mistake 



CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. 9 

when we think that there is a certain amount of boy- 
ish wickedness and girlish frivolity which must be run 
through before the religious life can begin. How did 
our Saviour himself represent the religious life to the 
thronging crowds ? " Jesus called a little child unto 
him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily 
I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as 
little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." A child, do we say, cannot be religious 
because he is still a child ? This is a fearful mis- 
take to act upon. Cannot a rosebud contain the 
sweetest fragrance and be painted with the most del- 
icate colors because it is yet a bud and not a full-blown 
flower ? Cannot the tiny cascade that flows down the 
mountain-side be pure and sparkling and life-giving 
because it is not yet a sweeping, rushing river? We 
expect to find fragrance in the bud and purity in the 
mountain rill ; we should expect to find religious 
fragrance and purity in the child's life, implanted 
there very early by the Saviour of little children. 
We should look for it, plan for it, and be alarmed if 
we do not find it ; and regard a young soul without it 
as a distorted and ill-proportioned object, a soul that 
lacks its chief excellence, just as a scentless bud or a 
brackish mountain brook would be regarded. But 
this early religious life, we must remember, does 
not take care of itself, any more than a rosebud 
springs up out of the ground without care ; the soil 
must be prepared, the seed must be dropped, the lit- 
tle plant must be watered and nourished and pruned 
and trained. 



10 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

The education of the Jewish children, as we have 
seen, was eminently a religious training. " If you 
ask a Jew," says Josephus, "concerning any matter 
concerning the law, he can more easily explain it 
than tell his own name ; since we learn it from the 
first beginning of intelligence, it is, as it were, graven 
on our souls." "The Jews," says Philo, "look on 
their laws as revelations from God, and are taught 
them from their earliest infancy ; they bear the image 
of the law on their souls." The children were bound 
to worship God in his sanctuary "as soon as they 
were able," was the regulation, "with the help of 
their fathers' hand, to climb the flight of steps into 
the temple courts." This was the way Samuel was 
trained, and David and John and Timothy ; and 
because of this training they became Samuel and 
David and John and Timothy. It depends upon the 
parents and teachers of to-day what the next genera- 
tion shall be, and it depends upon what they do and 
teach to-day. We have the clean, white, smooth 
tablets in our hands, in the souls of our children : 
what shall we write thereon, religion or worldliness ? 

Again, child life in the Bible is always represented as 
a constant growth. 

Over and over again we are told the child Samuel 
grew before the Lord. " And Samuel grew, and the 
Lord was with him." Of John the Baptist as a 
child it is said, " He grew and waxed strong in 
spirit." And even of our Lord Himself the same 
words are used. How we should shrink from using 
such an expression if we had no inspired authority 



CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. II 

for it ! The Saviour grew, increased in spiritual 
power! "Why," we should say, "it is almost .blas- 
phemy to speak thus." But the Bible says so. " And 
the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, and the 
grace of God was on him." This idea is universal 
throughout the Bible. To become religious does not 
make a prodigy of a boy or girl. It does not ripen 
and mature the character all at once. It is not a 
hot-bed process. The religious child is still a child, 
needing training, instruction, warning, and we must 
not expect or look for anything else. When we see 
the seed sown in fickle April weather springing up 
in April and flowering in April and bearing fruit in 
April, when we see saplings grow visibly before our 
eyes, expand in girth and throw out far-reaching roots 
and gigantic limbs in a single season, then may we 
expect to see a child Christian become an old Chris- 
tian in a week ; but till then we need not expect 
to see any such phenomena. Of course a child's 
ideas of religion are crude, of course his knowledge 
of duty is imperfect, of course he falls into childish 
blunders and errors ; there would be no such thing 
as growth in grace were it otherwise. But the a*corn 
contains the oak, the straight, branchless sapling is 
the forerunner of the wide-spreading shade tree ; in 
the child Christian's heart lie the germs of the aged 
Christian's experience. 

We think there is a lesson of vast importance in 
these considerations of child life in the Bible. We 
beg for it careful and prayerful attention, for it is a 
lesson which the church has too long neglected to 



12 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

its own sad hurt. It is this : It is natural, it is pos- 
sible, it is desirable for children to grow up into 
Christian manhood and womanhood without experi- 
encing any sharp and sudden transition from an evil 
life to a good life. Nay, it is not only possible and 
desirable, it is the thing we ought to expect ; it ought 
to be as common for young children to be born into 
the kingdom of God as to be born into the world. It 
is possible and natural for children to be converted 
at their mothers' knee, and never know the time 
when they did not love the Saviour. And this should 
not be something rare, occasional, remarkable, a phe- 
nomenon, a thing to excite remark, like a comet or 
a meteor. It should be the usual, expected thing 
that children of religious parents should choose to 
live for the Saviour as early as they are able to make 
any choice, and should be received into the church 
and receive its nurturing, fostering care. Search the 
child biographies of the Bible through and see if this 
idea is not borne out. Was Samuel a wise, independ- 
ent man before he heard God speak his name ? Was 
John the Baptist allowed to sow any wild oats before 
he became a preacher of righteousness ? Could Tim- 
othy better have strengthened the early church if 
he had been a roue in his youth ? Did Jesus Him- 
self pass through no period of boyhood growth ? 
Did even He not require thirty long years of train- 
ing before He called a single disciple to Him ? The 
churches and Christian parents at large have had 
their eyes blinded to this matter. The church has 
often said to the children, "You cannot come in 



CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. 1 3 

here : stand out there in the vestibule until you are 
grown up " ; and a very cold, cheerless vestibule it- has 
often been. Or else it has said, " Go to the Sun- 
day school : that will do for you while you are young." 
Devout parents have prayed earnestly that their 
children might become Christian men and women, 
but they have forgotten to pray that they might be- 
come Christian boys and girls ; and the men and 
women have too often remained what the boys and 
girls were. -It has been considered almost a neces- 
sity that they should become somewhat bad before 
becoming very good. Hence the sad lapses from 
virtue in the children of Christian parents ; hence 
the drunken boys and ruined girls who have brought 
shame into Christian homes ; hence the facts which 
have given rise to the old saw about ministers' sons 
and deacons' daughters. 

The doctrines of conversion, conviction of sin, and 
regeneration have been monstrously perverted when 
they have been made to teach that in every case, 
whatever the natural disposition or early training, 
there must be a sudden, conscious, terrible wrench 
from old ways of living ; for it shuts' out all childish 
conversions, and makes a youth of sin indispensable 
to an old age of godliness. This explains many of 
the terrible revelations which praying parents have 
had concerning their sons and daughters. They 
have looked and longed and prayed for a sudden, 
thrilling conversion and experience for their children, 
rather than for a very early turning to God and 
growth in grace. This sudden, thrilling experience 



14 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

never came, but ruin and disgrace and heart-ache 
have come, because the parents have not practically 
believed in a religious childhood. We believe that 
the Bible teaches that it is not necessary for young, 
innocent children to agonize over their sins, and mourn 
and weep like gray-haired offenders, and then come 
out of a terrible darkness into a marvellous light. 
We need not look for any such experience. The 
dawn comes gradually, the lightning with a blinding 
flash ; but the daylight is far more useful than the 
lightning's glare, and he is a foolish parent who says, 
"I will not believe that my child has any light until 
the electric flash strikes him blind with its dazzling 
rays." It depends very largely upon Christian par- 
ents whether the day-dawn from on high shall come 
into their children's lives while they are very young 
and illuminate all their eternity. Let us plan for 
this, pray for this, expect this, and to our children 
will belong the blessed experience of never knowing 
a time when they were not Christians. 



A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN. 1 5 



CHAPTER II. 

IS THERE A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN? 

Jerusalem, full of Boys and Girls playing. — A Place for 
Children in the Church. — Indicated by the Nature of 
Childhood. — By the Nature of Conversion. — By the Nature 
of the Church. — The Church of the Future. 

Ought there to be a place in the church for chil- 
dren who have given their hearts to God ? is one 
of the vital religious questions of the day. We do 
not mean to ask if there is a place in the church 
for an occasional child, one lamb among a hundred 
sheep. There always have been such sporadic cases, 
and the church has not often seriously objected to 
admitting the rare, precocious little saint. But the 
far more practical question is, ought there to be 
room in the bonds of church fellowship for the great 
mass of average boys and girls, who by judicious 
training and careful Christian nurture may be induced 
very early to give their hearts to God ? Aye, we 
believe with all our heart there ought to be such a 
place. We believe that before many years there 
will be such a place in every true church, and it will 
be just as much expected that many young children 
will form part of the membership of every church 
as that there will be gray-haired men and women 



1 6 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

there. Notice the terms of the prophecy of Zecha- 
riah concerning the future glory of God's kingdom, 
a prophecy which refers, undoubtedly, to the earthly 
kingdom which is often called by the name Jeru- 
salem. "The streets of the city [Jerusalem] shall 
be full of boys and girls " ; not here and there one 
who has somehow strayed within the walls, and is 
regarded as a prodigy and a wonder ; not a few of the 
sickly and the weak, who step into the courts of the 
earthly Jerusalem for a little while as into the outer 
courts of the heavenly city : not this, but in that 
good day it shall be full of boys and girls ; a large 
part of the membership of the church shall come 
into it in very early life. Of course, as in all cities 
many move into them in mature life, so many will 
always come into the church of God after a long 
residence outside ; but it is also true that as in old 
cities and countries the great majority of the inhab- 
itants are natives, so the great majority of the 
dwellers in God's earthly city should be, as it were, 
born within its walls, children of Christian parents, 
who have been trained for God's service from their 
infancy, and who never knew the time when they 
were not Christians. 

Another point of this prophecy makes it clear that 
though they are in the city of God, they are boys and 
girls still. They do not become old men and women 
the moment they set foot within the church doors. 
They are child Christians, as well as children at 
school and at their plays. They do not eschew 
games and fun and romps and glee. They bring all 



A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN. *7 

the exuberance and joyous, bubbling fulness of their 
lives into their new consecration. They are boys 
and girls "playing in the streets," not simply boys 
and girls walking demurely and soberly about the 
streets. Such boys and girls serve God with their 
base-ball and foot-ball and hop-scotch as well as in 
the prayer meeting and at the communion table. 
The very nature of childhood teaches us that there is 
a place for children in the church. Childhood is inno- 
cent, ardent, sincere : what three traits are more 
needed in the church of God, or better fit one for 
usefulness in it? Take, for instance, two men. One 
of them is all covered with the blotches of sin ; it has 
tainted his blood, it has corrupted his imagination, 
it has made his talk foul. Moreover, he has grown 
hard and callous ; nothing moves him. He believes 
in no one, and hence his own sincerity of character 
is impaired. Because he distrusts every one's hon- 
esty, he himself cannot be trusted. This is one 
man, whose counterpart we often see. Another man 
stands by his side. His life has always been gov- 
erned by principle ; he has been pure in thought and 
desire ; he believes in purity in others ; he is moved 
at the sight of heroism and true goodness ; he is 
sincere in his attachments, and believes in the sin- 
cerity of others. Neither of these men are Chris- 
tians ; but which of them, other things being equal, 
is nearest the kingdom of God ? Which is most fit for . 
Christ's service? We say at once, "The compara- 
tively pure, sincere man; the earnest, zealous man." 
But are purity, ardor, sincerity worth less in a child 

2 



1 8 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

than in a man ? Do not these very traits, which are 
natural to the young, when they become energized 
and made fruitful by the Spirit of God, mark their 
possessors as the fittest candidates for the church of 
God? 

Where does the recruiting officer look for new 
soldiers ? Does he search among the battle-scarred 
survivors of the last fight, who came out of it 
wounded and decrepit, with the loss of a leg or an 
arm, or a bullet hole in their skins ? Does he search 
through the hospitals and soldiers' homes for recruits ? 
Rather, does he not look among the able-bodied 
young men who have not been scarred by bullet or 
wasted by fever ? The tried veteran may be cooler 
under fire, and understand better the ruse and am- 
buscade of the enemy ; but after all, the decimated 
regiments are not filled with such men. Why should 
we always seek to fill the army of the living God 
with those who have been worsted in the fight with 
selfishness and greed and lust ? Whom do business 
men take into their stores to learn their business ? 
They do not take some one with habits fixed, and 
will immovable, and intellect unteachable ; somebody 
who, by years of other work, has contracted a dis- 
taste for their business. They take a boy and give 
him a boy's work to do ; he becomes a young man, 
and has a young man's work to do ; and by and by 
he becomes a partner, perhaps. Surely he makes a 
better man for the business than one who never 
entered the store until he signed the articles of 
partnership. Has not the church made a mistake 



A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN. 1 9 

in neglecting the young recruits, in refusing to train 
its children from the very first within its own walls ? 
The Holy Spirit does not prefer a broken and shat- 
tered harp to one that is full-stringed and musical. 
He uses earthen vessels, to be sure ; but he cannot 
do more with one that is cracked and chipped and 
foul than with one that is whole and sound. Can 
we not truly say that the very characteristics of 
childhood show us that there is a place for the child 
in the church of God ? 

No less does the nature of conversion point its to the 
same fact. There is but one question of pre-eminent 
importance to ask of those who knock at the door 
of the church before it is opened for their admission, 
and that is, " Have you given your heart to the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and are you trying to do his will ? " 
We do not ask, " Do you understand all the doc- 
trines ? " " Are you a theologian ? " " Do you agree 
with us on all nice, metaphysical points?" These 
are not the questions, but " Are you trusting in the 
atoning merits of Christ for salvation, and are you 
trying every day to do His will ? If so, the church 
is the place for you." We say it deliberately and 
thoughtfully : we believe an ordinary child of eight 
or ten years can understand just as well what con- 
version means, as a practical matter that concerns 
himself, as the most hoary sinner to whom the Spirit 
ever spoke. He cannot talk about it so well ; he 
cannot analyze his feelings so well ; he does not 
feel the same remorse for sin, for he has not com- 
mitted the same sins to be remorseful about : but he 



20 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

can appreciate the sacrific'e of his Saviour; he can 
say, "Lord, I believe," just as sincerely as if his 
mind had been befogged by a course of German 
psychology. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is 
every one that is born of the Spirit." So is the child, 
as well as the well-seasoned reprobate. Does not 
the same wind that bends the sturdy elm rustle the 
delicate petals of the rose-bush ? Does not the 
same breeze that flutters the leaves on the topmost 
bough bend the grass blades in the meadows ? 
"Great is the mystery of godliness." This is one 
of the mysteries : that while the ripest scholar cannot 
fully explain or understand all the provisions of the 
scheme of salvation, the simplest child, who has 
come to years of accountability, can know enough 
about it to accept its provisions and be saved. Let 
us ask the parents who read these pages if they do 
not believe that just as soon as their children become 
accountable for their deeds and liable to receive 
punishment for them, the loving Father of all pro- 
vides a way of escape for them that is just as plain 
and easy for them to accept as for the parents them- 
selves, who like them are accountable ? We know, 
when we think of it, that it must be so. We know 
that just so soon as a child becomes an accountable 
' being he may be saved from the sins for which he 
is accountable, or else the love of God becomes a 
delusion and a lie. 

If all children need to be saved, if any child may 



A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN. 21 

be saved, why will we not pray and labor and believe 
that our children may be saved ? When the child 
gives good evidence of conversion, there ought to be 
no bar between him and the communion table of his 
dying Lord. 

But some one says, "As an actual fact we do not 
find this state of affairs. It is comparatively seldom 
that we hear of young children being converted. It 
is only in rare instances of remarkable children." 
But is not this because we are unbelieving rather 
than because God is unwilling ? Is it not because 
we do not expect and work for and pray for their 
conversion ? Expect your children to be Christians 
early as much as you expect them to learn to walk 
and to learn to talk. Use means to make them such, 
and the anomalous cases will be those found outside 
of the church rather than within it. 

Once more, the very nature of the church proves that 
tJiere ought to be a place for cJiildren within it. Think 
of our common figurative names for the church ! 
"It is a fold," we say. What is the use of a fold? 
Is it a high enclosure, built with pickets and a heavy 
padlock on the gate to keep out the lambs and to 
keep in the sheep? "It is a home." What is a 
home ? Is it a boarding-house for all above a certain 
age who can furnish certificates of good moral char- 
acter ? Nay, it is not a complete home until there 
are prattling voices -in the nursery, and little feet 
pattering up the stairs, and little hearts and heads to 
be trained for what is good and wise. " The church 
is a school," we sometimes hear it said. Yes, and 



22 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

what is a school ? A place for learned scholars 
to discuss knotty problems ? Not generally, but a 
place where immature minds are trained and di- 
rected. If, then, we mean anything when we say 
that a church is a fold, a home, a school,, we mean 
that there is a place in it: for the child who is also a 
child of God. Says one of the wisest and most suc- 
cessful pastors of our land, speaking on this sub- 
ject : "Every child that gives clear evidence of faith 
in Christ and a sincere love to Him is entitled to 
admission into the fold, especially if parents testify 
that they see such evidence at home. The Bible 
gives no limitation of age. As soon as a boy is old 
enough to do intentional wrong, he is old enough to 
do intentional right. As soon as he can sin, he can, 
by the help of God's spirit, repent of sin and lay hold 
on Christ. When conversion takes place, confes- 
sion should follow. The church itself is not chiefly 
a higher university for the advanced growth and 
finishing off of ripe believers ; it is Christ's training 
school, in which the alphabet truths are taught. 
Why keep one of Christ's scholars out of Christ's 
school until he has made the proficiency of a ma- 
tured experience, or what is the 'Use of a fold if the 
lambs are to be kept out in the cold until they can 
stand the weather ? " In addition to these familiar 
figures, the church is often spoken of as a city, — the 
city of God. But in all earthly cities we encourage 
those whose parents reside in the city to make it 
their abode too. The very fact that their parents 
are citizens makes them citizens during their infancy. 



A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN. 23 

As we have said before, we expect those whose par- 
ents live in the town to make the best citizens. It 
is only in the city of God that we do not carry out 
this principle. If it is the unwritten law of the 
church that our children shall wander away from it 
before they are brought into it, that they must drink 
the bitter waters of sin before they drink the sweet 
waters of salvation, shall we have any but ourselves 
to blame for the decadence of the church ? This is 
not a matter which we can treat lightly or indiffer- 
ently. The welfare of the church of God depends 
more upon the attention that is given to this problem 
and its right solution, during the next generation, 
than upon any other question. It ought to be the 
expected, well-understood thing that the children of 
church members should themselves become church 
members before they leave the parental roof. The 
exceptions to this rule should be looked upon as 
anomalous cases, as sad examples of perversity in 
face of the light, which only God in His infinite wis- 
dom can explain. 

We do not expect our children to become scholars 
unless we provide them books and send them to 
school and incite in them in every way a desire for 
study ; but too many parents expect their children to 
become Christian, somehow, some time, in some mys- 
terious way, though they seldom say a word to them 
about it, or intimate to them that they owe some- 
thing to their souls as well as to their intellects. 

We are no advocate of haste in the matter of 
children joining the church; of any inconsiderate 



24 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

action. The evidences of a child's conversion should 
be looked to as carefully as those of an older person. 
How does he seem at home ? Is he gentler, kinder, 
more considerate, more unselfish ? Does he pray ? 
Does he read the Bible ? Parents know more about 
these evidences than the wisest church committee 
can learn. Does the child do right for Jesus' sake ? 
If so, his place is beside his father and mother at the 
communion table. And then, when he takes his 
place there, the good work is just begun. Constant 
nurture is the price of a matured, well-rounded, sym- 
metrical, Christian life. We do not turn our children 
loose in a school-room, and expect them to become 
ripe scholars, without any guidance or direction be- 
cause there is a blackboard and a primer and a map 
and a globe there. We need not expect that children 
turned loose in the church will become ripe Chris- 
tians, without care, simply because there is a cross 
and a Bible and a hymn book and a prayer meeting 
there. It has been well said, " Regeneration is 
simply a birth, and birth means infancy. Infancy 
necessitates feeding, nursing, watching, guidance. 
Presently come the stumblings and the tumbles of 
inexperience, and soon arises need of correction. If 
we always regarded a soul's* conversion and open 
confession of Christ as we regard a birth in our own 
homes, our next thought would be about the nurture 
of the new-born immortal." There is no more 
danger of laxness and backsliding in a child Chris- 
tian, trained with a reasonable degree of fidelity, than 
there is of a mature Christian falling from the grace 



A PLACE IN THE CHURCH FOR CHILDREN 2$ 

which has made him free. We will go further than 
this ; we believe that the best results of Christian 
life can only be attained by those who, in early years, 
are brought into the church of God, and are trained 
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
Fathers and mothers hold the key to the situation. 
Upon their shoulders, more than upon any human 
instrumentality, rests the burden. They are responsi- 
ble for the future strength or weakness of the church. 

The pastor can do something for the children, 
but he cannot do all. The Sunday-school teachers 
can do much, but not all. The church can do far 
more than she has done to look after the young, but 
no one can remove from the parents or divide with 
them their responsibility. 

"Thus saith the Lord of Hosts. There shall yet 
old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jeru- 
salem, and every man with his staff in his hand for 
very age, and the streets of the city shall be full of 
boys and girls." 

That prophecy is yet to be fulfilled. We can 
see in our mind's eye in one of the future years 
a great church gathered together. They are obey- 
ing that never obsolete precept of our Lord, " This 
do in remembrance of me." The emblematic bread 
and wine are before them. Not only a few of the 
more sedate and staid are gathered there, while the 
great mass of the young people go out, awaiting the 
assembling of the Sunday school in the afternoon 
as the only service for them ; but all are there, in 
that church of the future ; the grandfather and 



26 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

grandmother tottering with age ; the father and 
mother in the vigor of middle life ; the boy verging 
into manhood ; the girl blossoming into womanhood ; 
the younger brother and sister ; the little one, too, 
seven, eight, or nine years of age, bowing with rev- 
erence before the emblems of Him who died for 
young and old, of Him who shall gather the lambs 
with his arm and carry them in his bosom. 

There are vacant places in some of those pews 
that we see in this vision of the church of the future, 
but they are not caused by the indifferent absence 
of young or old from that great family gathering, 
but the only vacant places are those which the great 
Teacher himself has made by taking some of the 
little pupils from the school below to the school 
above, without allowing them to pass through the 
university course of a long, earthly life. But, with 
these exceptions, these households are unbroken 
around the communion table of that church of the 
future. It is a strange circumstance, if any member 
of the family is voluntarily away. The service is 
begun. The Bible is opened. The leader reads, 
" Feed my sheep, feed my sheep." That is not 
forgotten, but these Christians do not stop there ; 
they do not forget to read and obey the rest of 
Christ's commands, " Feed my lambs." In this 
picture of the future church, which our imagination 
summons up, this prophecy is fulfilled. Zion is full 
of boys and girls. The lambs are fed. May God 
speedily make this vision a blessed reality. May 
God soon send that glad day. 



CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 2*] 



CHAPTER III. 

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 

The Need of It. — Shown by the Sluggish, Depleted State of 
our Churches. — The Difficulty of Impressing with Religious 
Truth Persons of Mature Years. — Obstacles. — Opposition 
and Indifference of Parents, Teachers, and Churches. — "I 
am afraid my Child will not hold out." — Unreasonable Ex- 
pectations. — Encouragements. — Experience of Eminent 
Divines. 

In the last chapter we attempted to show, from the 
nature of childhood and from the nature of the 
church, the evident relationship of one to the other. 
Let us pursue this subject a little further, and consider 
the need of bringing children into the church, and 
the objections and encouragements to early church 
membership. To show the necessity of adopting 
some means for promoting the numerical and spirit- 
ual growth of our churches, we need go no further 
than to the official record of any of our large denom- 
inations. The "Congregational Year-Book" for 1882 
shows an apparent net loss in the whole denomination 
last year of 2,635 members ; and even the most favor- 
able showing gives an increase of only 3,500 members, 
or a net gain in the proportion of one to every one 
hundred and eleven church members. How long, at 
that rate, will the Congregational denomination be 



28 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

in accomplishing its part toward converting the world 
to Christ ? Other large denominational statistics tell 
a story but little brighter than this, while some sects 
have still more disastrous figures to face. There are 
thousands of churches, all our country over, in all 
denominations, which are growing smaller year after 
year, while others barely hold their own. These thin- 
ning ranks, however, can be filled with Christian 
boys and girls, who can be trained as the present 
generation of Christians has not been trained. 

We do not think that we are exaggerating the truth 
one iota when we say that there are one million young 
people in the Sunday schools of our land, easily sus- 
ceptible to the influences of the Holy Spirit and to the 
claims of religion, who might, within a single year, be 
converted and brought into our churches, if there were 
some efficient agency for their Christian nurture and 
training in every church. 

Statistics are stubborn things ; we cannot wink 
them out of sight, but we can change their story 
from one of disaster to one of victory by reiving 
more on training to fill our churches than upon con- 
quest. One great trouble with the church has been 
that it has depended almost exclusively upon con- 
quest. It has looked with complacency upon the 
figures and facts which tell of its depletion, and has 
said, " Oh, well, it is all right, one of these days we 
will have a great revival. It is a time of declension 
just now, to be sure, but one of these days the Lord 
will raise up a great spiritual general, a Nettleton, or 
a Finney, or a Moody ; we will institute a regular 



CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 29 

warfare upon the Evil One ; sinners will be converted 
to Christ, the ranks of our churches will be swelled 
once more, and a great company of captives will be 
dragged at Zion's chariot wheels." What nation would 
neglect its own children and rely for growth on con- 
quered foreigners ? Even Napoleon, king of conquest 
though he was, was wiser than this Though he laid 
every nation under tribute to France, his constant 
principle was, France must depend upon the chil- 
dren born upon her soil for her strength and glory, 
rather than upon the annexation of alien nations. 
" No nation can long thrive by a spirit of conquest," 
says Dr. Bushnell ; "no more can a church. There 
must be internal growth. Let us try if we may 
not train up our children in the way they should go. 
Simply this, if we can do it, will make the church 
multiply her numbers many fold more rapidly than 
now, with the advantage that more will be gained 
from without than now." 

This, then, is one indication of the need of Chris- 
tian nurture within the church : that the church is 
depleted, except in times of special revival, and that 
it relies for its strength upon conquest from without 
rather than upon growth from within. 

The need of greater efforts in the line of Christian 
nurture is also shown by the acknowledged difficulty 
of reaching persons in mature life. Most persons 
who are converted to Christ are converted in early 
life. All religious statistics bear out this state- 
ment ; and yet, with this undisputed truth staring 
him in the face, the Christian often tries to turn the 



JO THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

soul to God only after it has become old and hard- 
ened and unimpressionable. He quite reverses the 
processes of nature, and uses the stiff, brittle mortar 
in building up a Christian character, and strikes his 
blows upon the cold, unyielding iron, and tries to 
bend the gnarled and toughened oak according to his 
will. The parent and Christian teacher very often 
say, practically, " My little boy, my little girl, you 
are quite too small to be a Christian now ; but in 
about ten years, after you have been for a while a 
bad boy, a dissipated young man, a light-headed, friv- 
olous young woman, — after you have been such a 
one for a certain number of years, then some powerful 
whirlwind of religious experience will smite you, and 
you will be dreadfully sorry for your sins, and then 
Christ will save you : bat you must go through all 
this experience ; you must do something wicked to 
be sorry for first ; you must be somewhat bad before 
you can be very good." Not that any one says this 
in so many words ; nay, any one would be shocked 
to have these words put into his mouth : but that is 
practically what every one says who urges children 
to wait until they are older and more experienced 
before they give their hearts to Him who, they 
are old enough to know, died for them. We must 
remember that the sapling is a sapling but once in 
its lifetime, and all the strength of a Hercules can- 
not make the oak-tree over into a flexible twig. The 
boy will be ten years old but once in his life, and 
when the flexible age is once passed it is forever 
passed. These, then, are some of the indications of 



CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 3 1 

the need of greater attention to the conversion and 
Christian culture of young people. 

Now, what are some of the outward obstacles in the 
way of the conversion of children and the nurture of 
child Christians ? All these obstacles may be grouped 
under two heads, opposition and indifference, — the 
opposition and indifference of parents and teachers 
and churches. We are fully aware that much of this 
opposition is not intended as such, but it is none the 
less deadly. We know that many parents who love 
their children dearly, and respect the cause of reli- 
gion, would yet hold back their Christian children 
from an open profession of religion because of what 
seemed to them the very best motives, — they fear 
that their children do not know what they are about, 
do not mean what they say, do not realize what a 
serious, far-reaching thing it is to be a Christian ; 
and we sympathize with them in these fears, and 
see in them oftentimes only the excess of parental 
anxiety. But we would also remind them that the 
Bible has given us a test, and only one test, for con- 
version, and we need set up no other, — " By their 
fruits shall ye know them." The little slender 
apple-tree that has just come into bearing con- 
dition, and whose branches hang with a half-dozen 
apples, can be tested just as well as the tree that is 
loaded to the ground with fruit.- " What fruit are 
your sons and daughters and Sunday-school scholars 
bearing?" That is the all-important question ; not, 
"How old are they ?" If you can see the fruits of 
the Spirit in their lives, beware how you treat them 
as other than the children of God ! 



32 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

Once more, the opposition of parents often arises 
from unreasonable expectations of perfection and 
growth in grace. Said one parent to a little girl 
scarcely a dozen years old, who had begun to serve 
God, " Now, my child, if you are a Christian I shall 
never expect you again to show the least sign of 
fretfulness or impatience as long as you live ; and if 
you do, I shall conclude that you are deceived." If 
some great, supernatural being — an archangel, for 
example — should take that woman by the arm, and 
say to her, " You are a church member : now I shall 
never expect to see the least imperfection in your 
character ; and if I observe the least flaw in temper, 
in disposition, in imagination, or in word, I shall con- 
clude that you are deceived," we wonder how she 
would stand the test. " A child," says Dr. Bush- 
nell, " acts out his present feeling, the feelings of the 
moment, without qualification or disguise ; and how, 
many times, would all of us appear if we were to do 
the same ? " We should expect only childlike faith 
of child Christians. A boy Christian does not become 
a gray-haired patriarch all at once. We should hope 
that he would love his skates and his sled and his 
marbles and his gun still. A girl Christian does not 
develop into a conventional matron all at once. We 
hope she would not discard her doll and her picture 
book and her games until she ceases to be a girl. 
The boy Christian can show his religion by playing 
marbles fairly, as well as the man Christian by selling 
goods fairly. The school-girl can show her religion 
by the soft answer and by docile amiability, as well 



CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 33 

as her mother can show her religion by her gracious, 
lady-like bearing and her deeds of charity. The 
restrained temper, the ready obedience, fairness in 
sports, the willingness to pray and to read the Bible, 
the love of children's meetings, — these should all 
be taken as indications of the new life growing up 
within the young soul. The quick, parental eye, that 
is neither caustic nor over-critical, will very soon 
discern the germs of grace in the boy or girl whose 
heart is touched. 

But, says another parent, " I fear my child will not 
hold out. I fear the present indications of Christ- 
likeness are the result of feeling rather than deep- 
rooted principle." Perhaps so ; there is danger of 
this, to be sure, but wait and see. Do not pronounce 
it mere emotion until it has proved itself nothing 
more. One rough footstep on the tender plant, 
just sprouting from the ground, may crush it to the 
earth. 

The parent is afraid his child will not hold out 
in the Christian life. "The Spirit of God, then," 
he seems to say, " is not eq'ual to such a task 
as that of keeping his child from falling. God 
can sustain the bronzed and hardened sinner; He 
can keep the drunkard from falling ; He can save 
the red-handed murderer's soul ; and He can put 
His strong bands of love around the life of the gay, 
frivolous woman of the world, and preserve what 
little there is left of her heart from further cor- 
ruption ; but to keep the fresh soul of a compara- 
tively innocent child is too much for His might. It 



34 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

is a task quite beyond the Spirit's power." That is 
what the parent says who is unwilling that his child 
should start in the Christian life " for fear he won't 
hold out." We do not envy the feelings of that 
parent who looks to-day upon his grown-up son, hard, 
thoughtless, indifferent, unapproachable, and remem- 
bers that once, when that boy was younger, he 
wanted to be a Christian, but by home indifference 
or opposition was made to feel that he was too young 
to be saved. Is not the Spirit which guided little 
Samuel and the young Timothy, — yea, and with rev- 
erence we may add, the heart of the twelve-year-old 
Jesus, — is not that Spirit sufficient for the same work 
to-day ? Is not the promise unto us and to our chil- 
dren which says that the Spirit shall be poured out 
upon all flesh, so that your sons and your daughters 
shall prophesy ? 

Where, in the word of God, do we find any age lim- 
itation to the work of conversion ? Surely, if there 
were any such limitation, it would be mentioned. We 
should not be left in ignorance upon such a very 
important subject. Where do we find the chapter 
and verse in which we are forbidden to look for and 
hope for and pray for the conversion of very young 
people ? Does the Bible of any one of us read, " He 
which converteth the sinner, who is over twenty-one 
years old, from the errors of his way, shall save a soul 
from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins ? " Has 
any one a new revision of the old Word which tells 
him that "they that turn many to righteousness shall 
shine as the stars for ever and ever, provided that 



CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 35 

those whom they turn are grown men and women"? 
Does our Bible tell us that " He who winneth souls, 
who have lived between twenty and eighty years in 
sin, is wise " ? We do not find any such limitations, 
or hints of any such limitations, in the Scriptures ; 
but we do find by implication and precept the truth 
taught that whosoever shall not receive the king- 
dom of God as a little child shall not enter therein, 
and that of such little children is the kingdom of 
heaven. 

Not only the Bible but universal experience leads 
us to hope for and work for the conversion of chil- 
dren. We might, had we space, summon a cloud 
of witnesses. We will mention but a few distin- 
guished names. Polycarp was converted at nine 
years of age, and was able to say when led to mar- 
tyrdom, " Eighty-and-six years have I served Him, 
and He has never wronged me." Matthew Henry, 
we are told, was converted when eleven years old, 
Dr. Watts when nine, Bishop Hall when eleven, and 
Robert Hall when twelve. What parents, by prevent- 
ing their children from confessing Christ, would dare 
to take the responsibility of preventing a Matthew 
Henry or a Robert Hall from blessing the world ? 
We do not know who are in our families. There 
may be a Bishop Hall, there may be an Isaac Watts 
in one of these homes. At any rate, the sin is just 
as great of keeping back any true believer, however 
dull of intellect or weak in faith, from the open arms 
of the Saviour. 

Says Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, " It is no uncom- 



36 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

mon thing for children of seven or eight years of 
a°-e to have received more mental cultivation than 
we formerly looked for at twelve or thirteen. What 
is now common was once thought a prodigy in the 
development of mind. ... I will only remark that 
I have known a child at nine years of age better 
acquainted with the doctrines of religion than two 
thirds of our church members, and that I have been 
well acquainted with at least one case of conversion 
between five and six years of age." 

Says Mr. Spurgeon (this was written some years 
ago, but we know, from recent utterances, that his 
sentiments have not changed on this subject), "I 
have, during the last year, received forty or fifty 
children into church membership. Among those I 
have had at any time to exclude from the church, out 
of a church of twenty-seven hundred members, I have 
never had to exclude a single one who was received 
whilst yet a child. Teachers and superintendents 
should not merely believe in the possibility of early 
conversion, but in the frequency of it." 

Says Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, " I solemnly believe 
in the conversion of children. I cannot say how 
young they may be brought to make an open profes- 
sion of their faith and love for Christ, but I have seen 
as manifest evidences of the new birth in children of 
six and eight years of age as I have ever seen in an 
adult. Shall I turn back those whom God Himself 
hath brought ? Shall I refuse those whom God Him- 
self has accepted ? Never ! We are in an age when 
the church is to take the children, nurse them, train 



CHURCH MEMBERSHIP FOR CHILDREN. 37 

them, educate them, protect them, and prepare them 
for the work appointed for them ; and under no cir- 
cumstances to repel from the highest form of a Chris- 
tian profession the child that can give a fair account 
of the faith of its little heart in a divine Saviour, and 
manifest clearly and continuously the power of the 
love of Jesus shed abroad in that heart by the Holy 
Spirit." 

But the church does not need to go to ancient 
history or to modern divines for encouragement or 
countenance in this work ; for the sanctified common- 
sense of its united membership tells it that if the 
children of to-day are secured for the church, the 
church of the future is secure. 



38 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN 
ENDEAVOR. 

Its Origin. — Its Constitution. — Its Objects: To promote con- 
stant Confession of Christ, and earnest Christian Endeavor. — 
Its Spirit: The Spirit of Aggressive, Spiritual, Evangelical 
Christianity. — Its Rules: Are they too strict? 

With these Biblical examples, these adaptations 
of child life to the Christian life, these needs of the 
church and encouragements to labor for the conver- 
sion of the young in mind, the practical question 
arises, " What shall be done ? " It is easy to suggest 
defects, to deplore evils, to say things should be dif- 
ferent ; the more difficult matter is to devise some 
practical remedy. What is needed is evidently some 
well-defined plan of work, which shall awaken the 
susceptible minds of children to the need of salva- 
tion, and shall train them patiently and unweariedly, 
day by day and week by week, for Christian useful- 
ness, thus making early church membership natural 
and safe. Such an agency the Young People's Soci- 
ety of Christian Endeavor is designed to be, and has 
proved itself to be in many cases. It was begun in 
feebleness and self-distrust, and its promoters have 
endeavored simply to follow the Divine leading and 
the dictates of common-sense. The animus and pur- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 39 

pose of this organization cannot better be shown 
than by relating the way in which it originated. 

Some personal allusions will be excused, perhaps, 
in this brief recital. 

In the winter of 1 880-81, in connection with 
some Sunday-school prayer meetings, quite a large 
number of boys and girls of my congregation seemed 
hopefully converted. Their ages ranged from ten 
to eighteen, most of them being over fourteen years 
old. They were bright, earnest, natural young Chris- 
tians, with all the faults and all the virtues and prom- 
ise of ordinary boys and girls. 

The questions became serious ones, How shall this 
band be trained, how shall they be set to work, how 
shall they be fitted for church membership ? Is it 
safe, with only the present agencies at work, to admit 
them to church membership ? These questions were 
pressing for an immediate answer, for a few months 
of inaction and sloth might blast many of these bud- 
ding Christian characters. Stimulated and guided by 
an article of Dr. Cuyler's concerning a young peo- 
ple's association in his church, I asked the young 
Christians to my house to consider the formation of 
a society for Christian work. They responded in 
large numbers ; and after talking the matter over, 
finding them willing and eager to enter upon active 
religious duties, we formed a Society of Christian 
Endeavor of some sixty members, all of whom signed 
their names to the stringent rules of the constitu- 
tion, after having them fully explained, and appar. 
ently with an understanding of their purport. Thus 



40 THE CHILDREN 'AND THE CHURCH. 

it will be seen that this movement originated in an 
hour of practical necessity and to meet a felt need ; 
and it has been, we think, from the beginning, a 
humble, tentative, flexible effort to train young 
Christians for usefulness and service in the church 
of God. No one has had a hobby to ride. No pre- 
conceived plan has been rigidly adhered to. No as- 
sumption of wisdom or infallibility has been indulged 
in. It has not been claimed that this is the only 
way or the best way to train young Christians ; only 
that it is one way which has received some signal 
marks of the Divine approval. Perhaps an adequate 
idea of the purpose and object of the society can best 
be derived from the constitution, which is substan- 
tially the same as the one that evening adopted, and 
which we here submit. 

CONSTITUTION 

OF THB 

WillistoD Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, 

PORTLAND, ME. 



CONSTITUTION. 

NAME. 

This society shall be called the Williston Young Peo- 
ple's Society of Christian Endeavor. 

object. 
Its object shall be to promote an earnest Christian life among 
its members, to increase their mutual acquaintance, and to 
make them more useful in the service of God. 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 4 1 



MEMBERSHIP. 

The members shall consist of two classes, Active and 
Associate. 

Active Members. — The Active members of this society 
shall consist of all young people who sincerely desire to 
accomplish the results above specified. They shall become 
members upon being elected by the society, and upon signing 
their names to the book, thereby agreeing to live up to the re- 
quirements of the Constitution. 

Associate Members. — Any young person who is not at pres- 
ent willing to be considered a decided Christian may join this 
society as an Associate member. Such a one shall have the 
privileges of the society, and shall have the special prayers and 
sympathy of the Active members, but shall be excused from 
taking part in the prayer meetings. It is hoped and expected 
that all Associate members will in time become Active members, 
and the society will work and pray for this end. 

The Lookout Committee shall, by personal interview, satisfy 
themselves of the fitness of young persons to become members 
of this society, and shall propose their names at least one week 
before their election by the society. 



OFFICERS. 

The officers of this society shall be a President, Vice-Pres- 
ident, and Secretary, whose duties shall be those which usually 
fall to such officers. 

There shall also be a Prayer-Meeting Committee, a Lookout 
Committee, a Social Committee, a Missionary Committee, a 
Sunday-School Committee, a Relief Committee, and a Flower 
Committee, each consisting of five members. 

DUTIES OF OFFICERS. 

The duties of the President, Vice-President, and Secretary 
shall be those that usually fall to such officers. 



42 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 



THE PRAYER-MEETING COMMITTEE. 

This committee shall have in charge the Friday-evening 
prayer meeting, shall see that a topic is assigned, and a leader 
provided for each meeting. 

THE LOOKOUT COMMITTEE. 

It shall be the duty of the Lookout Committee to bring new 
members into the society, to introduce them to the work, and 
to the other members, and to affectionately look after and reclaim 
any that seem to be indifferent to their duties. 

THE SOCIAL COMMITTEE. 

It shall be the duty of the Social Committee to provide for 
the mutual acquaintance of the members by occasional sociables, 
for which any entertainment that may be desired may be pro- 
vided. 

THE MISSIONARY COMMITTEE. 

It shall be the duty of the Missionary Committee to raise 
money for benevolent objects by voluntary contributions or by 
entertainments, to distribute the same according to their best 
judgment, and to account for all money thus raised to the society. 
A sum not exceeding one fourth of all the money thus raised 
may, if deemed necessary, be used for the current expenses of 
the society. It shall be the duty of this committee also to 
provide for an occasional missionary meeting, and to interest 
the members of the society, in all ways, in missionary topics. 

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL COMMITTEE. 

It shall be the duty of this committee to endeavor to bring 
into our Sunday school those who do not attend elsewhere, and 
to co-operate with the superintendent and officers of the school 
in any ways which they may suggest for the benefit of the 
Sunday school. 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 43 



THE RELIEF COMMITTEE. 

It shall be the duty of this committee to seek out cases of 
sickness and suffering among the members of the society, to 
bring them to the notice of the other members, and, so far as 
possible, to relieve those who may be in want. 

THE FLOWER COMMITTEE. 

It shall be the duty of this committee to provide flowers fcr 
the pulpit on Sunday, whenever practicable, and afterward to 
distribute the same to the sick, whenever it may be possible to 
do so. 

REPORTS OF COMMITTEES. 

Each committee shall make a report to the society at the 
monthly business meeting, concerning the work of the past 
month. 

BUSINESS MEETINGS AND ELECTIONS. 

Business meetings can be held at the close of the Friday- 
evening meeting, or at any other time, in accordance with the 
call of the President. An election of officers and committees 
shall be held once in six months. Names may be proposed by 
a Nominating Committee appointed by the President. 

THE PRAYER MEETING. 

// is expected that all the Active members of this society will 
be present at every meeting unless detained by some absolute 
necessity, and that each one will take some part, however slight, 
in every meeting. The meetings shall be held just one hour ; 
and, at the close, some time may be taken for introduction and 
social intercourse, if desired. Once each month an experience 
meeting shall be held, at which each member shall speak concern- 
ing his progress i7i the Christian life for the past month. If 
any one chooses, he can express his feelings by an appropriate 
verse of Scripture. It is expected that if any one is obliged to 
be absent from this experience 7iieeting, he will send the reason 
for such absence by some one who attends. 



44 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

At the close of the monthly experience meeting, the roll shall 
be called, and the response of the Active members who are 
present shall be considered a renewed expression of allegiance 
to Christ ; and if any member of the society is absent from the 
monthly experience meeting, and fails to send an excuse, the 
Lookout Committee is expected to take the name of such a 
one, and in a kindly and brotherly spirit ascertain the reason 
of the absence. If any i?ie7nber of this society is absent and 
unexcused from three consecutive experience meetings, such a 
one ceases to be a member of the society, and his name shall be 
stricken from the list of members. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Any other committees may be added and duties assumed by 
this society which may in the future seem best. 

This Constitution can be amended by a two-thirds vote of 
the society, provided that notice of such amendment is given 
in writing, and recorded by the Secretary 7 , at least one week 
before the amendment is acted upon. 

It will be seen from this Constitution that the sole 
purpose of this organization is to promote, in every- 
way possible, the religious life of its members. It is 
not a literary society, although if it is thought best in 
any particular instance to promote the attractiveness 
of the society, one evening of the week may be set 
apart for literary exercises under its auspices, pro- 
vided these exercises in no way interfere with the 
religious life of the members. It is not a social club 
for young people, although once each month, at least, 
there should be a social gathering where the boys 
and girls may be assured of a good time ; but this is 
for the sole purpose of making the distinctively and 
avowedly religious aims of the society more attrac- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 45 

tive. In short, the sole object of the organization is 
to make religion, child religion, a natural, rational, 
permanent part of the child's life; to make the Lord 
Jesus Christ to appear the children's friend, and His 
active, acknowledged service something to be entered 
into and enjoyed by all young persons as heartily, 
zealously, and constantly as their studies and their 
games. 

To be more specific, what in detail are the objects 
of this society ? 

First, it will be seen that one great object of the 
organization is to provide a natural and pleasant channel 
through which young people and even little children 
may every week acknowledge Christ. 

Active membership implies, according to the con- 
stitution, that one is trying to be a Christian, and 
every one that joins it promises and expects to per- 
form a Christian's duty. The very act of joining, 
where the rules are strictly lived up to, is a confes- 
sion of allegiance to Christ. 

In the second place, soine such agency as this gives 
the young people something to do ; and as every pastor 
knows, nothing stimulates the budding activity of 
the Christian like having some means of expending 
his energies. 

I11 the third place, another great object of this society . 
is to give the pastor and older Christian friends of the 
young people an opportunity of knowing constantly their 
religious status. No one who belongs to this society 
need ever drift away from the anchorage of a reli- 
gious hope without the fact being very soon known 



46 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

to older friends, who can hope by wise and loving 
counsels to bring back the wanderer to his old 
mooring. 

A fourth object of this society is to form a stepping- 
stone to church membership ; or, to vary the figure, to 
make a temporary shelter, into which the young convert 
may be immediately received and kept in comparative 
safety from the roaring lion, until the church is willing 
to receive him into its fold. 

A fifth object of this association is to increase the 
efficiency of its members for future service in the cJiurch 
of Christ. 

We will not enlarge upon these five objects of the 
society, since we shall have something further to say 
upon this subject in another connection and in the 
next chapter, but will proceed to say a word about 
its spirit. Its whole spirit and tendency, so far as 
we have been able to ascertain, is directly in the 
line of aggressive, evangelical, spiritual Christianity. 
It does not assume that the child is an angel by 
nature, who only needs a little coddling and encour- 
agement in order to find its wings. It assumes that 
the child needs to be converted as much as the older 
person ; that while his sense of sin may not be as 
deep or his rapture at deliverance from sin as fer- 
vid, that yet there is an experience of conversion as 
appropriate to the child as to his father. It assumes 
that the conversion of a child is as much the work 
of the Spirit of God as the conversion of the oldest 
sinner ; and yet, while this is true, it seems possible, 
owing to the superior susceptibility and innocence 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 47 

of the child's nature, in the same time and with the 
same human efforts to lead ten children to Christ 
where one adult is brought to him. This society 
seeks evidence of the child's true conversion, and to 
promote his growth in grace. In principle and prac- 
tice this organization honors the church ; places it 
at the head of all agencies, as the divinely appointed 
one for the evangelization of the world, and en- 
deavors to work, in a modest way, as its humble 
assistant among the young. Such, in a few words, 
seems to us to be the spirit of this organization. 

As to its Rides. — These rules are strict, and are 
meant to be strict. They provide that only those 
who give good evidence of conversion to the Lord 
Jesus Christ shall be active members of the society. 
The associate members, too, while Christian char- 
acter is not required of them, do, thereby, in becom- 
ing associate members, put themselves directly under 
religious influences, and by the very terms of the 
constitution indicate that they are willing to have 
the prayers of the active members especially offered 
for them. The committees are held strictly to their 
respective labors, for each one is expected to report 
once each month as to the duties performed during 
the past four weeks. But the peculiarity, and, to 
a large extent the efficiency, of this society depends 
upon its prayer-meeting rules and their observance. 

Let us repeat this section of the constitution 
relating to the prayer meeting with emphasis, for in 
proportion as these rules are enforced and lived up 
to will this organization be of real value. 



48 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

The Prayer Meeting. — It is expected that all the 
active members of this society will be present at every 
meeting, unless detained by some absolute necessity, 
and that each one will take some part, however slight, 
in every meeting. The meetings shall be held just 
one hour, and at the close some time may be taken 
for introduction and social intercourse, if desired. 
Once each month an experience meeting shall be held, 
at which each member shall speak concerning his prog- 
ress in the Christian life for the past month. If any 
one chooses, he can express his feelings by an appro- 
priate verse of Scripture. It is expected that if any 
one is obliged to be absent from this experience meeting, 
he will send the reason for such absence by some one 
who attends. 

If any member of the society is absent from the 
monthly experience meetings, and fails to send an 
excuse, the Lookout Committee is expected to take 
the name of such a one, and, in a kindly and brotherly 
spirit, ascertain the reason of the absence. If any 
member of this society is absent and unexcused from 
three consecutive experience meetings, such a one 
ceases to be a member of the society, and his name 
shall be stricken from the list of members. 

This is a voluntary society. No young person 
who fears these rules or disapproves of them need 
subscribe to them. But if he does join, and volun- 
tarily accepts and signs this constitution, he can be 
held to its rules. He has then himself agreed to 
attend every meeting ; and, if he is habitually or fre- 
quently absent without excuse, the Lookout Com- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 49 

mittee has a right to find out the reason for such 
absence. 

Once a month, with more than usual strictness, 
the rules require every member to be present, and 
the roll is called to find if any are absent without 
excuse. Those who are then absent from the monthly 
experience meeting are interviewed by the Lookout 
Committee before the next meeting, and ( it is found 
that when this precaution is taken, the same ones are 
rarely absent from two consecutive monthly meet- 
ings ; while if they are absent from three in succession, 
and take no pains to ask for an excuse, the evidence 
is quite conclusive that such no longer deserve to be 
reckoned as active members, and their names are 
dropped from the roll. The society is thus contin- 
ually self-weeded, and cannot contain for any great 
length of time many who are not genuine Christians. 
All are expected, too, as we have seen, to take some 
part in every meeting, and voluntarily agree, when 
they join the society, at least to repeat a verse in 
the weekly meeting. 

This is the principal and distinguishing rule of the 
organization, and we may be pardoned for referring 
to it again, and for dwelling upon it at some length, 
since it marks the difference between this and other 
societies of the kind, and would frequently, we think 
make all the difference between a real, live young 
people's meeting and the old young people's meet- 
ings or young old people's meetings which exist in 
so many churches. 

The rules require, too, that the Prayer-Meeting 



50 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

Committee shall see that topics and leaders are pro- 
vided for every meeting; that the Social Committee 
shall furnish games, readings, music, etc., for a 
monthly sociable ; and that the Lookout Committee, 
most important of all, shall, as before hinted, not 
only find new members for the society, and decide 
upon their fitness to join, but shall also keep a 
watchful eye on every member who has signed the 
constitution, to see that each one lives up to his 
voluntarily assumed religious duties. 

"Are not these rules too strict?" we hear some 
one say. In fact, a great many persons have written 
us to this effect, — that in their churches it would 
never do to have such stringent, iron-clad rules for 
the prayer meeting, requiring attendance and parti- 
cipation. But why not ? If a young person is a 
Christian, is it pledging himself to endure too much 
hardness as a good soldier to attend a prayer meet- 
ing once a week, when not absolutely prevented, and 
to take some slight part in every meeting ? Is not 
the church too lax in its requirements of its' con- 
verts ? Does it not expect too little of them ? 
There is no room for the spirit of heroism of old, 
except in the faithfulness and zeal with which these 
little duties are performed : shall we not, then, expect 
and demand that these Chiistian duties shall be per- 
formed by the young convert, even at the risk of per- 
sonal discomfort and at the sacrifice of personal ease ? 

Have they any right to be called the followers 
of Christ, to say nothing of being the spiritual de- 
scendants of Paul and Peter and Polycarp and Lati- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 5 I 

mer and Huss and Luther, unless they are willing 
to pledge themselves to these " iron-clad rules " ? 
Again, unless some such rules are adopted and ad- 
hered to, we think any society of this kind has a 
very poor chance for a long or vigorous life. The 
prayer meeting is not only the pulse and the ther- 
mometer of such an organization, it is, in some sense, 
the life-blood itself ; and when it dies or flags, the 
society dies or flags. So long, then, as it is the gen- 
erally expected thing for all the members to take part 
in every meeting, it will be comparatively easy for 
each one to take some part ; but when it is not ex- 
pected or required, some excuse will occur every week 
to the great majority of young Christians why they 
should not take part in that particular meeting, and 
very soon it will be left to the ready-tongued or the 
peculiarly conscientious, until at last it will degener- 
ate into a meeting engaged in by few and interesting 
to none. Still, though something is required from 
each, a very little is accepted as fulfilling the require- 
ments : the simplest word, the shortest verse of 
Scripture, is considered sufficient ; and a mere re- 
quest to be excused from attendance from the expe- 
rience meeting, showing that the absent member 
thought of the meeting and considered himself bound 
by the regulations, is always granted. It is not 
difficult for the youngest Christian, who is truly in 
earnest, to fulfil all the duties which he voluntarily 
assumes. The dangers which may be apprehended 
from this constant, compulsory, oral confession of ' 
Christ will be treated in another chapter. 



52 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN 
ENDEAVOR. 

How it fits Children for Church Membership. — A Half-Way 
House to the Church. — A Training School within the 
Church. — A Watch-Tower for the Church. 

We have already related how this society seeks 
the Christian nurture of the young people who volun- 
tarily join its ranks. Let us attempt to explain how 
it seeks to make church membership safe and useful 
for the youngest Christians who come under its 
influences. 

In the first place, it is a half-way house to the church. 
There is always a dangerous interval between the 
conversion of the child and his reception into the 
church. In fact, to the older Christian, this interval 
is always attended with peril. As some one has 
expressed it, " The devil almost always has a severe 
tussle with the Christian before he lets him join 
God's earthly people." But with young people this 
period is bristling with dangers. Children usually 
are obliged to wait longer than grown people to 
prove their discipleship, before being received into 
full communion by the people of God. Sometimes 
they may be put off months or years before the con- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 53 

servative church committee will consider them suit- 
able candidates. Sometimes their parents may re- 
strain them, from mistaken notions of what the 
Christian life demands of a child, or of what church 
membership involves. Very often, if left to them- 
selves, the terrors of the " examination " and the 
shrinking from public appearance would overcome 
the desire of the young disciple to acknowledge his 
Master before the world. The longer he is restrained 
by any of these causes, the harder it becomes for 
him to take this important step, the less necessary 
it seems to him month by month ; and at last, with 
hardened conscience and calloused sensibilities, he 
decides to remain out of the church, which at first 
he desired to join. The child Christian who, without 
special methods of religious training, spends the first 
year of his new life outside of the church, is in very 
great danger of never joining the church. 

There are thousands of men and women — one 
meets them everywhere — who will tell you that, 
when they were young, they were convicted of sin, 
and, as they thought, gave their hearts to the Saviour, 
but no one encouraged them to go any farther, the 
church door was practically barred to them, they 
drifted farther and farther away from it, they became 
careless and indifferent, and their early love for the 
Saviour became only a pleasing childish dream 

Now, what can we do for these lambs of the flock ? 
Shall we condemn them to stay outside of the fold 
for three, six, or twelve months, the very months 
when they most need shelter and warmth, without 






54 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

making any provision for their remaining near the 
fold, so that they may enter when its doors are 
opened ? Has there not been a fatal gap, right here, 
in too many cases, between conversion and church 
membership ? 

To bridge this gap, to form a half-way house to 
the church, is one object of this society. Into its 
membership the child Christian can be at once 
received, as soon as he gives to the Lookout Com- 
mittee credible evidence of conversion to Christ. 
To seek and gain admission to this society, in which 
are so many of his own age, is no dreaded ordeal. 
By joining it he confesses to a limited circle that he 
has a Christian's hope, and thus makes the supreme 
confession, which joining the church implies, easy 
and natural and almost certain. At the same time, 
it should be plainly impressed upon the young Chris- 
tian that this society is not the goal ; that it is only 
a half-way house, only a temporary shelter ; and that, 
as soon as church committee and parents think it 
safe to receive him, he is to stand up before the 
great congregation and take upon him the vows of 
God's people. 

In the second place, the Society of Christian 
Endeavor is a training school within the church. It 
is not intended that the young Christian should 
cease to be a member of this society as soon as he 
becomes a member of the church. In fact, his chief 
usefulness in the society then begins ; for he feels 
an added responsibility, and knows that he is looked 
upon by others as one who has taken double vows 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 55 

of allegiance to Christ, and is regarded more as an 
example by still younger Christians who are not yet 
church members. Every week the evening comes 
when he must, in some brief way, renew his alle- 
giance to Christ. The interests of the society, he 
feels, as well as his own growth in the Christian life, 
depend upon his faithfulness ; and the feeling of 
responsibility and usefulness in his Lord's service 
develops his Christian life as nothing else can do. 
Perhaps the trembling young disciple begins by 
repeating in his weekly meeting a verse of Scripture, 
for at least as much as this is required of every 
one ; this accustoms him to the sound of his own 
voice, and soon he is able to add to his Scripture 
verse a word or two of his own. There are many in 
the society who have no more experience than him- 
self, and whose words are just as stumbling as his 
own, so he has courage to persevere. Since some- 
thing is expected and required of all, it soon becomes 
the customary thing to take part in meeting, and 
what is customary and usual soon loses its terrors. 
By and by the leader of the meeting calls on him to 
offer prayer, or else of his own accord he engages 
in his first, halting, public prayer, and gradually 
develops into one of the leaders and supporters of 
the meetings. His pastor will find, too, that his use- 
fulness is not confined to the young people's meet- 
ing, but that at the regular church prayer meetings 
he is present, and ready for any work he is called 
upon to do. At least this has been the experience 
of many pastors ; and boys who have had but a few 



56 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

months' training in the Society of Christian Endeavor 
have developed into earnest, faithful workers in all 
departments of prayer-meeting effort. 

The meetings of this society should be led, not by 
the pastor or deacons of the church, but by the mem- 
bers of the society. Even the youngest boy can sit 
in the leader's chair, give out the hymns, and read 
the Scripture lesson for the evening ; and his very 
youth and inexperience will lead the others to be 
more prompt in coming to his assistance, and in pro- 
moting "a good meeting." This training is invalu- 
able in giving confidence, and willingness to under- 
take similar duties in the future. 

But not only in the prayer meeting does this 
society serve as a training school for the church. 
Many of its officers should be from the ranks of its 
younger membership. Perhaps the president should 
be one of the maturer young men, and one or two 
on each of the committee should have the best judg- 
ment and the largest experience attainable, but other 
members may be from the ranks of the younger and 
newer Christians. Thus, if the officers and com- 
mittees are changed once or twice a year, all in 
course of time will have a chance to become ac- 
quainted with committee work, with parliamentary 
usages, and with the routine duties which many will 
assume in their future church life. Nor is this all. 
It should be impressed upon each boy and girl that 
their duties as Christians are not confined to the 
prayer meeting and the sociable ; that they have 
words to speak in private, and prayer to offer for 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 57 

their companions who are not yet Christians. Many 
will be surprised to find how readily a boy can reach 
a boy's heart ; how easily a girl, with the missionary 
spirit, can diffuse it around her, until other girls 
catch the glow of her zeal. This hand-to-hand, 
evangelistic work the young people will enter into* 
if rightly guided and encouraged, and the lessons it 
will teach them will never be forgotten. We have 
used the masculine pronoun in these pages, but the 
feminine might be substituted for it just as well. 

All this work may be done by girls and young 
ladies as well as by boys and young men, and they 
may become aids to the prayer meeting and to all 
other branches of church work as well as their breth- 
ren, through the means of this training school. 

In the third place, the Young People s Society of 
Christian Endeavor is a watch-tower for the church. 
Through this agency the church may know the 
religious status of each one of its young people. 
The pastor and some few of the prominent church 
members, who are in peculiar sympathy with the 
movement and with young life in general, should 
attend all the meetings, not for the purpose of using 
much of the time or of taking a prominent part in 
the meeting, but for the sake of seeing how the 
young people get on. 

The requirement of the constitution which demands 
participation in the monthly experience meeting is a 
great help in this direction ; for thus, at least once a 
month, the pastor can hear his young Christians 
commit themselves anew to their Saviour, and, if they 



58 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

are derelict to this self-imposed duty, he can find 
out the cause of their unfaithfulness. The Lookout 
Committee may be of very great assistance to the 
pastor in this direction, keeping him posted concern- 
ing those they call upon in the performance of their 
duties, and giving him the clew to the religious life 
of many of the boys and girls, of which he would 
otherwise know but little. 

Thus the growth in grace of each one of the 
young Christians may be watched and fostered ; and 
no one can slip away from the outward performance 
of duties, which usually precedes or accompanies in- 
ward unfaithfulness, without the fact becoming known 
to some of the older Christians of the church. To 
speak from personal experience and in the first per- 
son once more, I feel in a certain sense as though 
I stood with my hand on the shoulder of each of the 
one hundred and fifty active members of the Young 
People's Society of Christian Endeavor in our own 
church, and that no one of them can escape that 
friendly grasp without my knowledge. In other 
words, I know something of the religious life of 
each of these young people, and learn a little more 
about it every week, which is a great deal more than 
I can say of the majority of the older members of 
the church Thus does this society prove to be a 
watch-tower for the pastor and older members of 
the church, as well as a training school within the 
church and a half-way house to the church. 

One of the most essential factors in this society 
is the Lookout Committee, as we have elsewhere 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 59 

intimated. If this committee does its work faithfully 
and wisely, there is little danger that the rules will 
not be observed, or that there will be disastrous 
failure in any department of the work. This com- 
mittee can do very much to make the society a true 
half-way house, fitting school, and watch-tower for 
the church. 

In view of the great importance of this branch of 
the organization, we append some hints concerning 
the labors of this committee, furnished by one who 
for many months has been the chairman of such a 
committee, and who has proved exceptionally efficient 
and successful in carrying on this work. 

The Lookout Committee Work. 
"While each committee has its own peculiar work, 
and distinct responsibility for the Society of Christian 
Endeavor, a considerable part of the real work de- 
volves upon this committee ; and the name itself, 
' The Lookout Committee,' suggests what the work 
is. First, its work is to look out for and bring new 
members into the society. It may do this looking 
out in many ways. One way is to be watchful and 
note those who attend the meetings ; to give stran- 
gers a cordial greeting and learn if they are followers 
of our Master, and if they would not like to join us 
as workers in our band. In any event it should look 
out that they do not long feel as strangers. Then 
there are many young people who do not attend any 
prayer meeting, and who know but little of Christian 
living. Surely this committee should seek for such 



60 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

as these, and try to bring them in where they may 
learn of their Saviour, and to help them to begin to 
serve God. It should particularly look out for new- 
members in the Sunday schools. Here are the boys 
and girls who, week by week, are learning out of 
God's word how to love and trust in their Saviour. 
These should be encouraged to come into the Society 
of Christian Endeavor, and acknowledge the Lord 
whom they love. If every Sunday-school teacher 
would heartily co-operate with this committee, a 
much better work could be done than would be pos- 
sible for it to accomplish otherwise. Among the 
associate members in the society, too, this committee 
should look for active members. These are members 
who have not yet decided to follow Christ. It should 
strive for these who are so near ; strive prayerfully, 
with many earnest invitations. This is the home work, 
which should be done with patience; kindly, quietly, 
and zealously. Its labors should not cease until all 
are brought in as active members who shall be 
helpful in the society and useful in God's service. 
If the chairman of the committee has this matte^ 
the bringing in of new members, in hand, and the 
work be done systematically, the future work will be 
greatly facilitated. Once each month, at least, the 
committee, after having decided that all are proper 
persons to be admitted into the society, should pre- 
sent the list of the names of those desiring to join, 
to be voted upon. In introducing the new members, 
effort should be made to give to each some work that 
will attach responsibility to their position, and which 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 6 1 

may help them to live up to their agreement, and 
make them truly useful in the service of God. The 
work of this committee is also to look after its own 
members. This looking out necessitates the personal 
acquaintance of the Lookout Committee with each 
member. That acquaintance may be begun when 
the member is brought into the society, but should 
not end here. Let friendly calls be made upon all 
the members. If the committee keep a list of the 
names of the members, there can be some system for 
doing this part of the work, so that each person may 
not receive one, but many calls. It is in the homes 
that the pleasant words may be spoken which may 
-help to promote an interest in the daily living for 
Christ, and make stronger the desire to serve the 
Lord Jesus in all things ; and the kind word fitly 
spoken, wherever we may meet one of our number, 
on the street, at the place of business, or in the social 
gathering, has its part, and it is no small one, in this 
work. The result of this looking out for opportuni- 
ties to be helpful, and then using them, none can 
know. But, after all the planning, it is only the 
hearts which are truly consecrated to the Master's 
work, and that are bound up in this work for the 
young, that will know how to do this work of love. 
'Be instant in season, out of season,' would make 
a good watchword for the committee. This com- 
mittee has also to look after any who may seem to 
be indifferent to their duties. Yet, if it earnestly 
looks out for all its members, as has been suggested, 
there will be few of these. There may be some who 



62 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

do not often attend the meetings, and who are never 
heard from. It is the duty of the committee to see 
such, and, if possible, ascertain the reason of their 
delinquency; and, if excusable, explain the case before 
the society. If they are really indifferent, it ought, 
in a kind and affectionate manner, to strive to arouse 
them to a greater interest in Christian living, and, 
reminding them of the rules of the society, to make 
them more earnest in living up to their agreement. 
This committee should be wide awake and watchful, 
and, by the timely, encouraging word, strive to keep 
all interested in the society, and to prevent any from 
falling out by the wayside. If this be a thoughtful, 
faithful, and prayerful committee, its opportunities 
are unbounded to work for Christ and to promote 
the welfare of the young." 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 63 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN 
ENDEAVOR. 

Questions Answered. — How can the Society be started? 
— What Age Limit shall be imposed? — Is this Plan fitted 
for Small, Weak Churches ? —What does "Absolute Neces- 
sity "mean? — How should an Experience Meeting be con- 
ducted?— Why should the Roll be called at its Close? — 
What other Work may be attempted? — How shall the 
Indifferent be dealt with? 

Suggestions. — Care in admitting Members. — Strict Ad- 
herence to the Rules. — Constant Vigilance needed. — The 
Pastor's Place in this Work an Essential Place. 

Objections Answered. — That the Society will detract from 
the Pre-eminence of the Church. — That it will interfere 
with the Church Prayer Meeting. — That it will foster a 
Brazen, Wordy Type of Piety. 

A great many questions of a practical nature 
concerning the workings of this society have come 
to us from correspondents in all parts of the country. 
Let us try to answer some of these questions in this 
chapter. 

" How can I start such a society ? " is the question 
that often comes. 

"There is no particular interest among the young 
people of our congregation, and I should be afraid 



64 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

that the attempt would lack support, and fall flat 
from the very beginning," say many. 

It is unquestionably much better to begin such a 
movement during a time of revived religious interest 
among the young. This revival interest gives every 
such work an impetus which it can gain in no other 
way, and this impetus and headway may be main- 
tained with comparative ease when the society is 
fully established. We would begin with a prayer 
meeting especially for the young. Let the pastor 
invite all the boys and girls, who desire to attend 
such a meeting, to remain for a few minutes after 
Sunday school some Sabbath. He will be sur- 
prised oftentimes, we think, to see how many will 
respond. Then, with the help of a few judicious, 
young-hearted teachers, let him try to point these 
boys and girls, who show enough interest to attend 
this meeting, to the Lord Jesus Christ. After a few, 
earnest, winning words from himself and others, 
perhaps he will think it best to ask those who wish 
to remain for personal, religious conversation to do 
so. Again we think the pastor will be surprised 
(we are speaking from experience in this matter) to 
find how many children are willing at least to talk 
with him on this subject. By this personal conver- 
sation, repeated for a few weeks in succession, and 
especially with the help of wise and faithful teachers 
in their own classes, he can soon winnow the sin- 
cere and earnest young disciples from their thought 
less and indifferent companions, and can, before 
many weeks, form them into a Society of Christian 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 65 

Endeavor, in which there should, -if possible, be a 
few of the older young people of the church. This 
little band will grow, as the plan for Christian nur- 
ture becomes better known and more popular, until 
it will become a powerful auxiliary for good. But 
even when there is no religious interest among the 
children, and no means of awakening such an inter- 
est (a very rare and exceptional state of affairs), such 
a society may still be started, if there are only two 
or three young people who are willing to subscribe 
to the iron-clad rules of the constitution, and meet 
together once a week for Christian helpfulness. 
Their meetings will always be interesting, even if 
they last for only twenty minutes ; and their num- 
bers, we think, will soon increase, if only the charter 
members are faithful and zealous. 

" Is this plan fitted for small, weak churches, where 
there are only a few young people ? " 

We think so ; for the only condition of success is 
that those who do belong, be they few or many, be 
true to their pledge and persistent in their efforts to 
bring others into the Christian life. 

" What should be the limits of age in this society ? " 

This is a question which will very largely answer 
itself in practice. The very young, those under nine 
or ten, cannot well attend the evening meetings, and 
so cannot join a society which pledges such attend- 
ance ; and middle-aged and elderly church members 
will doubtless feel, for the most part, that their 
sphere of usefulness is in the regular church prayer 
meetings, and, while aiding the young people in 



66 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

every way in their power, will not wish to take up 
very much of their weekly prayer-meeting hour. 
Earnest, Christian young men and women, however, 
from eighteen to thirty years of age, are a very valu- 
able element, for the society needs the maturer judg- 
ment and assistance of these in many ways. 

"Will young men and women of twenty-one or 
over unite with children of ten or twelve in this 
work ? " 

Generally, we think, there will be little prac- 
tical trouble on this score. The older ones will 
soon see that they are very useful to the younger 
ones, and that a large field of Christian effort lies in 
this direction. As the work progresses, they will 
doubtless become more and more engaged in it ; 
while the younger ones, feeling that they too have 
a share in the management of the organization, will 
be easily led and guided by those who have had more 
experience. 

We have found it wise sometimes to assign, in 
a quiet way, some particular younger boys to each 
of the older ones to look after and help. 

" Is it best to have both sexes in the same society ? " 

By all means, we should say. Each helps the 
other. Some kinds of committee work, girls and 
young ladies can do far better than the boys ; while 
some of the offices can best be filled by young men. 

" What does the phrase ' unless prevented by an 
absolute necessity,' in the prayer-meeting clause of 
the constitution, mean ? " 

Just what it says. Of course it must be inter- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 6*] 

preted by the individual conscience to a greater or 
less extent, but it is intended to exclude all slight 
and frivolous excuses for non-attendance, and to 
make attendance really obligatory upon those who 
willingly enter into this agreement. Absence from 
town, sickness, prohibition of parents, of course, 
make absence " absolutely necessary " ; but the pres- 
ence of company, a fascinating novel, childish dis- 
inclination or freaks of any kind, should not be 
allowed to keep the young Christian from his reli- 
gious duties. 

"How should the experience meeting be con- 
ducted ? " 

Like any other, except that all who take part 
in it should be so brief as to give every other 
member a chance to speak, which indeed is a good 
rule for any prayer meeting. This "experience 
meeting " has often been misapprehended, we think. 
It has received this name for lack of a better. Per- 
haps " consecration meeting " or "commitment meet- 
ing " would more accurately describe it. The idea 
is that once each month every young person shall 
publicly reconsecrate himself to God, in some simple, 
appropriate way; perhaps by merely repeating a verse 
of Scripture that expresses his feelings, perhaps by 
saying, "I am trying to serve Jesus," "I hope I am 
a Christian," " I have been trying to live a Christian 
life during the past month," or "I hope to serve my 
Master better during the month to come." 

Such expressions are frequently heard in the 
experience meetings, and answer every requirement 



68 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

and expectation. As the young disciple grows older 
and stronger, he may have more to relate concerning 
his past experience ; but it is not required. No 
well-rounded Christian experience is expected from 
month to month ; the simplest, most childlike ex- 
pression of allegiance to the child's Saviour is alone 
demanded. The importance of such a frequently 
renewed consecration to the young disciple, during 
the formative years of his Christian life, cannot be 
overestimated. 

"What is the use of calling the roll at the close 
of the monthly experience meeting, as is the practice 
in some societies ? " 

One reason is to find out who is absent without 
excuse. In a large society no other method could 
be adopted, and the Lookout Committee would not 
know whom to approach with the word of warning 
or reproof. Another great object is that the answer- 
ing to the roll may be a recommitment of the young 
disciple to his Saviour. He should be taught when 
he answers "present," and confesses thus that he is 
an active member of the society, and under obligations 
to obey its rules, that he, at the same time, confesses 
that he is a follower of Christ, and wishes to be 
numbered among His people. 

Thus the calling over of the names is far more 
than the reading of a muster roll : it gives to every 
one a new opportunity for confessing Christ once 
each month. 

"What other work can be undertaken by such a 
society besides the prayer-meeting work ? " 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 69 

Committees of various kinds may be raised, accord- 
ing to the need of different churches. There may 
be a Flower Committee, to provide flowers for the 
pulpit each . Sunday ; a Relief Committee, to look 
after such children and young people as are sick 
or poor, and may need aid ; a Sunday-School Com- 
mittee, to bring into the Sunday school, children 
who do not attend any other school ; and a Mis- 
sionary Committee, to raise funds from among the 
members by voluntary contributions for missionary 
objects. In fact, these branches of work may be 
almost indefinitely enlarged, according to the judg- 
ment of each pastor and local society. 

" How can members who grow lax and careless be 
kept up to a steady performance of their duties ? " 

The Lookout Committee, if rightly constituted, is 
very useful in this work. The fact that the mem- 
bers know they will be looked after, if they forget 
their obligations, is a great restraint and safeguard. 
If any stray away, a kind word often recalls them to 
their duties ; while, if the unfaithfulness is wilful and 
prolonged, there is nothing left but dishonorable dis- 
mission, which shall relieve the society of further 
responsibility for the delinquents. Those who have 
acquired a real distaste for a Christian's duties will 
no doubt avail themselves of the back door out of 
the society, and, by absenting themselves from three 
consecutive experience meetings, will thus exclude 
themselves from it ; but such cases will not, we think, 
be frequent. 

One or two cautions seem to be necessary at 



■JO THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

this point. In the first place, care should be taken 
to admit only Christian young people to active 
membership. 

While the idea is new and enthusiasm runs high, 
a great many of the younger ones may desire to 
enroll themselves as members; without really under- 
standing the object or rules of the society. This 
should not be allowed. The Lookout Committee 
should take pains to find out that every one who is 
proposed for membership gives credible evidence — 
the evidence that a child or youth should be ex- 
pected to give — of conversion ; and that he under- 
stands and is willing to live up to the strict re- 
quirements of the constitution. 

Of course, with the utmost watchfulness, some 
may be received who really do not belong in this 
fold of young Christians ; but the number will be 
comparatively small, and will have no disturbing 
effect upon the religious zeal of the others. Again, 
especial pains should be taken that the rules shall in 
no instance become dead letters. This idea has 
been alluded to in a preceding chapter; but, for the 
sake of emphasis, we desire to mention it in this 
place. These rules are not meant for show upon 
paper, but for the actual guidance of the lives of 
those who subscribe to them. 

There is nothing in any one of them that should 
be considered impossible or even onerous by the 
hearty young Christian. Then they should be ob- 
served. The great danger to be contended with is 
this danger of laxity. It is so foreign to the 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. J I 

expectations of our older church members that every 
one should bear some share of the burden of every 
meeting, that it is thought quite preposterous to 
expect this of mere children ; and so, little by little, 
a few are in danger of finding the meetings in their 
own hands, and the design of the society, as a training 
school for the youngest and for every one, is frus- 
trated. But it will not be impossible, as experience 
has proved, to make these rules effective, if those 
who have charge of the interests of the society are 
true to their trusts, and are willing to take the 
necessary pains to enforce them. Soon it will be- 
come the popular and the expected thing to attend 
all the meetings and to support them. The force of 
habit, and the esprit de corps among the members, will 
come to the aid of pastor and teachers, and a new 
generation of Christians will come up with whom 
prayer-meeting work is neither spasmodic nor spo- 
radic, but a regular, accepted part of daily duty. 

Another suggestion is that this society will not 
take care of itself. The young people must be 
guided, encouraged, watched, and sympathized with 
constantly. This is no patent process for turning 
out young Christians without any labor on the part 
of pastor or older friends. Constant vigilance and 
oversight are required. The great merit, as it seems 
to us, is that this organization makes thi^ oversight 
practicable and effective. This society accomplishes 
nothing unless live men who love the young, whom 
Christ blessed and for whom He died, are behind it, 
and are willing to be very busy in His service. Nor 



72 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

does this agency supersede or render unnecessary 
other forms of work for the young. It in no way 
takes the place of Sunday school work ; it relieves 
the pastor of no private duties toward the young of 
his flock ; it does not take the place of pastor's 
classes for the catechetical instruction of the boys 
and girls ; in fact, in connection with the work of 
this society, it has been our custom for several years 
to have a " pastor's class " meeting in the afternoon, 
for instruction in the church creed, and the doctrines 
of evangelical religion. This class and the weekly 
meetings of the society have been mutually helpful, 
one to the other. 

It has been said that there is not sufficient room 
for the pastor's influence in this work. On the 
other hand, this organization gives a great many 
additional levers to the pastor, which he may use, 
if he will, most effectively. To be sure, his name 
may not appear among the list of officers, he may 
not take charge of the prayer meetings ; but he should 
always be present, and his should be the unseen hand 
which guides every movement. 

There are various regulations which may be wisely 
adopted by different societies according to local 
needs. For instance, while it is best that the subject 
of the prayer meetings should always be known by 
all in advance, it may be sometimes best to print the 
subjects for some weeks ahead, at other times to 
announce them each week for the next, and at other 
times to post a written list in the vestibule of the 
vestry, to be chosen from when no better subjects 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 73 

present themselves. Another suggestion, which 
comes from a correspondent, is that all the young 
people be encouraged to keep a memorandum book 
in which they shall put down prayer-meeting topics, 
thoughts to be presented at the next meeting, lists 
of those to be remembered in prayer, and other help- 
ful notes. 

The monthly sociables in our judgment should be 
confined to the members, active and associate, and 
to those whom the Social Committee may especially 
invite ; but they should not be opened to any and all. 
This exclusiveness will prove a stimulus to associate 
membership, perhaps, and many who would not other- 
wise do so may put themselves under the influence 
of the active, praying members of the society, for 
the sake at first of the good times which the sociables 
afford. The aim in these sociables should not be too 
manifestly didactic. Their object is to give all who 
attend a good time, and to make them feel at home 
among the Christian young people, and to make them 
familiar with each other. To accomplish this object, 
while there should be a fair proportion of music, 
readings, and literary entertainment, games should not 
be ignored or frowned upon by the older members. 

Objections. — Many objections to this method of 
work have naturally arisen and have come to our 
ears. Most of them may be grouped under two 
heads : First, these young people's societies, it is 
said, will interfere with the church and detract from 
its pre eminence. Second, it is thought they will 
foster a forced, unnatural religious character. 



74 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

As to the first objection : The only test of this is 
experience, and as far as our experience goes, it 
points directly the other way. Our church prayer 
meetings have been better attended, with a far larger 
proportion of young people, and with much more 
active help from them, since the establishment of 
this society than ever before. At least sixty, whom 
we could not otherwise have expected to see join 
the church, have joined within a year and a half, 
led to Christ and trained for Christ by the influences 
of this society. There are six organizations of the 
same kind in Portland, and every one has resulted 
in awakening a new interest in religious matters 
among the young, and in bringing many into these 
churches. The same is true of scores of similar 
societies, from which we have heard, in various parts 
of the land. 

Some one says, " Bring them all, young and old 
and middle-aged, into one great prayer meeting, and 
let us have no classifications of age in the prayer 
meeting." 

Very true, bring them all together ; urge this upon 
them, keep it before them, that, whatever happens, 
they must never desert any of the regular meetings 
of their church ; but at the same time, if they wish 
to come together on still another evening, when less 
embarrassed by the presence of their elders, for 
mutual help, shall we forbid this, when all their 
practice will inure directly to the benefit of the 
church ? Can we expect a child Christian to find 
his voice for the first time when two or three hun- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 75 

dred older Christians are listening for his confession ? 
As a practical matter, do we not need some fitting- 
school for the young convert, and, instead of regard- 
ing any such movement as antagonistic to the church, 
should we not welcome it as a most needed auxiliary ? 

Another says in this same line of criticism, " I don't 
believe in anything outside of the church. God 
appointed the church to accomplish the conversion 
of the world, and what is outside of the church is 
wrong in principle and practice." 

But in what sense is such an organization outside 
of the church ? No more than the Sunday school, 
no more than the prayer meeting, are outside of the 
church. It is carried on by the church and for the 
church, and for the purpose of bringing children into 
the church, and of keeping them from falling after 
they are in the church. Surely nothing could have 
a more intimate relation with the church than just 
such an organization. 

Another class of objectors take the ground, as we 
have said, that any such efforts, and especially such 
meetings as this society contemplates, will cultivate 
a bold and brazen type of piety ; that it will brush 
the first bloom from the youthful Christian heart : 
in a word, that it will foster a forced, unnatural, 
precocious religious experience. The only answer 
to make to such objectors is the answer of actual 
experience, " See if it does." We have watched 
carefully for any budding signs of such unnatural 
religious precocity, and we have yet to find the first 
indications of it. And why should we expect this ? 



y6 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

Is there not a religious experience as germane to the 
boy as to the man ? Is it not as natural for a Chris- 
tian boy to speak as a Christian boy, as for a Chris- 
tian man to speak as a Christian man ? We have no 
doubt that some children could be nattered and 
cajoled into thinking that they were experienced 
veterans when they were but babes in Christ, and 
might put on unbecoming airs in consequence ; but 
the vast majority will be so timid and modest and 
shrinking that the great problem will be how to 
bring them out rather than how to repress them in 
the expression they give to their religious life ; and 
a very few kindly words will be sufficient to check 
the few too forward ones, if any such are found. 
Much objection has been made to the experience 
meeting on this ground. It has been made, however, 
we think, under a mistaken view of its nature and 
object. The idea, as we have intimated, is not that 
each young convert shall once each month present 
a well-rounded or unique experience, the more start- 
ling the better, thus provoking the invention of the 
boys and girls after a month of ordinary, routine, 
Christian living. The leading idea is that then each 
member of the society shall in public renewedly 
express his determination to serve God. If he 
chooses to tell what has befallen him in the Christian 
life, well and good : it is pleasant to hear the young 
disciples express the joy they have had for four 
weeks in serving their Saviour ; but this is not 
required, — simply an expressed or implied acknowl- 
edgment of Christ's claim upon him. The advan- 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. ?/ 

tages of frequently bringing the child to commit 
himself as a Christian before his companions are -too 
obvious to enlarge upon ; and we will only add that, 
so far as we have noticed, — and we have carefully 
watched for it, — these experience meetings have fos- 
tered nothing but the simplest, sweetest, most child- 
like religion. 

We are very far from claiming that this is the 
only method of Christian nurture, or the best method 
devisable. We only submit it as one plan which has 
worked well in many places, as one method which is 
surely better than no method at all. The exigencies 
of the times demand an aggressive movement in this 
direction. Our depleted churches, waiting listlessly 
for a revival, point in this same direction. The mul- 
titudes of young people, going out from Christian 
homes unsaved, emphasize the same fact, that some 
new and efficient plan of Christian nurture must be 
adopted, and that growth from within is as important 
to the welfare of the church, to say the least, as 
conquest from without. 



yS THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN 
ENDEAVOR. 

Further Misapprehensions corrected. — The Object not only 
to awaken, but to keep awake. — Not to make Chil- 
dren Prominent, but to make them Useful. — Further 
Questions answered. — " How may Interest in Religious 
Matters be first aroused ? " — The Sunday-School Prayer 
Meeting. — A Catechetical Class. — This Society not a 
Labor-Saving Contrivance. — A Flexible Organization. — 
What has been done. — What may be done. 

So many practical questions have come to us since 
we began the preparation of this little work, that we 
are constrained to add a chapter to our original plan. 
And first a word of explanation to those who have 
misunderstood the animus of this work for the young. 

It has been understood in some quarters to be a 
kind of children's crusade, a revivalistic effort, simply 
to induce children to pledge themselves to Christ. 
The task which the Society of Christian Endeavor 
has set before it is much more difficult than this, 
and its scope is much broader. It is easy to arouse 
children's sensibilities. A thrillingly told story will 
start their emotions. A powerful appeal will awaken 
their consciences. But what will keep these con- 
sciences awake ? Who will carefully prune and train 
and nourish and foster until the little plant becomes 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 79 

rooted and grounded in Christ ? To accomplish this 
latter and far more important work is the chief 
object of the society we have described. We have 
nothing to say against any proper and sensible 
method of awakening the religious sensibilities of 
the young, but we have very much to say against 
dropping them and leaving them unguarded, the 
moment these sensibilities are awakened. 

Many " converts " may be counted where such 
methods are employed, if the count is taken soon 
enough after the thrilling appeal is made ; the more 
important question is, how many will answer to their 
names when the roll of Christ's followers is called 
after ten or twenty years ? Much reproach has been 
brought upon child-religion and Christian nurture by 
unwise and injudicious attempts to scare or coax or 
melt children into a religious mood. Such attempts, 
if they stop there, are often worse than useless, for 
the plant of Christian character, instead of being 
warmed into new life, is often seared and burned, so 
that it never again easily responds to the vivifying 
influences of the Sun of Righteousness. 

Against a prejudice thus created, are all new plans 
for Christian nurture obliged to contend ; but we 
desire to have it distinctly understood that the 
methods we have described contemplate not this 
sudden, spasmodic, gusty work, but a quiet, watchful, 
long-continued, patient effort, extending through 
months and years, to fit children for the church of 
God on earth and the assemby of the redeemed 
above. It has been our earnest prayer and hope 



80 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

that some such agency of Christian nurture, estab- 
lished in our churches, might increase the confidence 
of older Christians in youthful piety, and might dispel 
the prejudices which well-meant but unwise methods 
of revival work among children have created. 

Another misapprehension is that this society tends 
to make children prominent in public, that its prime 
object is to make a religious stump speaker of every 
boy or girl whom it can induce to join its ranks. 
Such an idea is so whimsical and so wide of the mark 
that it hardly seems worthy of serious answer, but it 
has been urged, and we wish to free the minds of all 
our readers of every such idea. 

This society contemplates no exhibitions, no dis- 
play of the talent of its members for religious exhor- 
tation. The prayer meetings are quiet gatherings to- 
gether of young disciples. There cannot well be any- 
thing of the public declamation flavor to them ; no 
exhibition of dress, no posturing, no stage effects are 
possible. What can be more natural or more child- 
like than the gathering together of young Christians 
to recite the words of inspiration, or the simple words 
God has given them to speak to each other. If reci- 
tations in public schools and Sabbath schools are not 
open to this charge, we cannot well see how it can be 
laid at the door of the Young People's Society of 
Christian Endeavor. 

One of the most frequent questions which comes to 
us is, " How shall we arouse interest enough among 
our young people to make them willing to start such 
an organization, and to live up to its stringent rules ?" 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 8 1 

We have already alluded to the Sunday-school 
prayer meetings as one solution of this problem ; 
but, owing to the vital importance of this question, 
we shall be pardoned, perhaps, for dwelling more at 
length upon this means of making a beginning. 

We have published some suggestions upon this 
point in the Sunday School Times, which we take 
the liberty of reproducing here, in part : — 

The Sunday-school prayer meeting should be held 
directly after the session of the Sunday school, and 
to them all the boys and girls as well as teachers 
should be urged to stop. 

At these meetings let it be understood that there 
is to be direct, hand-to-hand work for the salvation of 
souls ; and let the very youngest understand that the 
object of these meetings is to bring them to the 
Saviour. Many will go out when Sunday school is 
done, very likely, but many, also, will remain in re- 
sponse to the invitation ; some from curiosity, some 
because their companions remain, and some because 
they really desire to be Christians. Let the pastor 
or superintendent, or some judicious teacher, take 
charge of the meeting, and in a few direct, forcible 
words tell the children what it is to be a Christian, 
that Jesus longs to receive the smallest one, that it 
is a matter of choice for the child as well as for the 
man, and that Christianity is best shown by consis- 
tent, every-day living for Jesus at home, at school, 
and on the street. 

At the first meeting it may be well to ask all the 
children who are willing to think the matter over 



82 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

seriously, and to try to decide before next Sunday 
whether or not they will become Christians, to rise. 
It is our experience that a large number will rise at 
such an invitation ; some out of sympathy with 
others, and many because they sincerely desire, in a 
childish way, to become the followers of Jesus. In 
the week that intervenes they will have time to think 
the matter over, and, if they have Christian parents, 
they should be urged to talk with them upon the 
subject. If they cannot talk with their parents, then 
with their Sunday-school teachers or some expe- 
rienced friend. 

The next Sunday all these children, and very 
likely others, will remain to the Sunday-school prayer 
meeting, and it may be well to ask them then how 
many have thought the matter over carefully, and 
have finally decided to devote their lives to the 
Saviour. It would seem best to make the decision 
seem a very plain and simple matter, but also a very 
serious matter, and to warn the boys and girls that 
they must make no pledges lightly or without full 
determination to carry them out. The great danger 
at this stage is that some, influenced by others, and 
with a feeble, half -formed determination to do better, 
will pledge themselves without really meaning any- 
thing by it ; but this danger can largely be guarded 
against by a few words of serious explanation of 
the nature of the Christian life, and of its being a 
matter of eternal import, and therefore not to be 
trifled with. 

The serious may further be sifted out from the 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 83 

frivolous by asking all the children who wish to know 
more about the Christian life, and who are really in 
earnest to be followers of the Saviour, to come to 
the pastor's house some week-day, appointing one 
day for the girls and another for the boys. For the 
most part, only those who are really in earnest will 
accept such an invitation ; and the opportunity this 
will give for private, personal talk with each of the 
children will be invaluable. 

After four or five such Sunday-school prayer meet- 
ings, followed by such supplementary meetings at 
the pastor's house, it will be easy to sift the merely 
impulsive from the deeply serious or truly converted ; 
and then it might be well to present to the boys and 
girls some simple pledge to which they shall sign 
their names, and which they can keep in their Bibles, 
and read over every day until it is ingrained into 
their minds. Every pastor will choose to make out 
his own pledge, perhaps, but we would suggest the 
following, as very simple and yet comprehensive : — 



Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for strength, 
I promise Him that I will try to do whatever He 
would like to have me do ; that I will pray to Him 
and read the Bible every day, and that, just so far 
as I know how, throughout my whole life I will 
try to lead a Christian life. 

Signed 



84 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

The children, as we have said, should be encour- 
aged in every way to talk with their parents and 
other friends about the matter, and perhaps, if they 
are quite young, should take the pledge home and 
show it to their parents before they sign it. Very 
few parents will refuse to allow their children to sign 
such a pledge, and it will please them to know that 
everything that is done for their boys and girls is 
open and aboveboard. And now the real work of 
Christian nurture begins. The start has been made, 
the entering wedge has been driven, the door has 
been opened for the admission of the Spirit, and now 
comes the pastoral training and all the many good 
influences which an active church can throw around 
its children. Now comes in the opportunity for the 
Young People's Society to set these young Chris- 
tians at work, and fit them for future usefulness. 
Now may properly be formed a church-membership 
class for these lambs, in which they shall be in- 
structed as to the requirements and duties , of the 
church, and from which, in due time, they shall be 
graduated into the church of God. 

We make these suggestions because in practice 
this plan has been found to work admirably. Doubt- 
less there are many modifications and improvements 
which each pastor, in his practical application of it, 
can suggest ; but is not the Sunday-school prayer 
meeting one method of leading the boys and girls, 
the hope of the church in years to come, to take the 
first step ? 

We do not mean to say that a Sunday-school prayer 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN -ENDEAVOR. 85 

meeting is the only door of entrance to the Young 
People's Society of Christian Endeavor. It is only 
one way to begin. Doubtless it may often be best to 
establish such a society without waiting for or striving 
for the impetus of an increased religious interest. 

The very fact that such an organization is estab- 
lished, and that it brings each young person face to 
face with the question, "Am I a Christian ?" is often 
of itself enough to awaken new interest in religious 
things. In many instances we have known the ques- 
tion, "Will you join our society as an active mem- 
ber, that is, as a professed Christian?" to be the 
turning point in a young soul's experience. He has 
been wavering hitherto, perhaps, not willing to avow 
himself an unbeliever or an enemy of Christ, by any 
means, but hardly daring to be counted among Christ's 
friends. He would not think of joining the church. 
No one would urge him to take that step yet. But 
here is his opportunity. " Will you become an active 
member of our society?" says one of his young 
friends. He is brought face to face with a question 
which must be decided one way or the other, and this 
fact will often be enough to lead the religiously in- 
clined to decide forever for the right. 

" Will this society be sufficient to fit all young 
people who join it for church membership, without 
any other means of training ? " 

We should think not. Careful instruction should 
go with this means of Christian nurture. The Chris- 
tian life must be explained, its duties enforced, the 
nature and object of the church taught, the creed of 



86 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

the church inculcated ; and this can hardly be done 
in such meetings as this society contemplates. 

These meetings are meant to insure the constant 
reconsecration and to promote the heart devotion of 
the young Christians. The instruction for the head, 
as to the technicalities of theology and Christian liv- 
ing, should be given in some other way ; and we know 
of no better way than to form a pastor's catechetical 
class. Such a class, carried on at least for a few 
months of each year, will greatly help the work of 
the society, and will largely tend to the rooting and 
grounding of the young Christians in the faith. 

Another question which often arises in some form 
is, " After all, is it not best for the pastor to remain 
away from the meetings of young people, in order 
that they may be less embarrassed ? " We should an- 
swer this with a very emphatic No. No pastor 
has any business to be so out of sympathy with his 
young people that his presence at their meetings 
shall embarrass them. If he must be absent from any 
meeting, let it not be from the young people's meet- 
ing. If he feels that his presence will make this 
meeting less free, then, by all means, should he go to 
it, until he becomes so familiar with his boys and 
girls, and they with him, that they shall regard him 
as one of themselves, or rather as an elder brother, 
who will lead them around all pitfalls and over all 
rough places. As we have somewhere said before, 
it does not seem best to us that the pastor should 
lead these meetings, but he should be present as one 
of the young people at heart, however gray his locks 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. Sj 

may be, and he will thus learn, as he can learn in no 
other way, how the lambs of his flock are prospering, 
and what peculiarities of feeding and folding each 
one needs. 

The great danger that we fear for the success of 
these societies is that they may be left too much to 
manage themselves. Many will doubtless be started 
which will soon die out, simply through lack of inter- 
est, or organizing ability, or hard work, on the part of 
the pastor and a few older Christians. This method 
is no labor-saving contrivance. To keep it up to the 
right standard will doubtless involve a large amount 
of personal work and oversight and thought on the 
pastor's part, and it will add to his burdens very consid- 
erably. We only claim that this is a method for mak- 
ing the work of the earnest, faithful pastor tell more 
effectively upon his young people. This is a fulcrum 
by means of which, if sufficient prayerful energy is 
put forth, the whole spiritual plane of the young peo- 
ple may be raised. 

It will be seen that the Society of Christian En- 
deavor is meant to be a very flexible organization. 
Each pastor can mould it according to the needs of his 
particular flock. It can embrace within its scope a 
great many departments of Christian effort. 

It will be noticed that in the constitution provis- 
ion is made for a Missionary Committee, a Sunday- 
School Committee, a Relief Committee, and a Flower 
Committee, besides the other committees whose 
duties have already been enlarged upon. We need 
not dwell at any great length upon the work of these 



88 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

committees, for their duties are fully specified in the 
constitution. Every one of them is designed to meet 
a real need, and every one adds to the work and 
responsibilities which the young people may assume. 
For instance, take the work of the Missionary Com- 
mittee. No church is doing what it should until it 
gives of its money and its sympathy and its prayers 
to carry the gospel to those who have it not. Where 
can the true missionary spirit be better inculcated 
than in such a society ? For not only can attention 
be directed to missionary topics in various ways, but 
the plan of systematic giving can be introduced, and 
every boy or girl may have the chance of devoting 
something, if it is only one cent a month, to mis- 
sionary work. This plan has already been adopted 
in at least one society, and has been found to work 
admirably, and to considerably increase the benevo- 
lent contributions of the church. What better oppor- 
tunity of raising up a new generation of systematic 
givers can be afforded ? Lessons in practical philan- 
thropy at home can also be afforded, for the Relief 
Committee can bring any case of sickness or want 
to the notice of the others, and practical measures 
can be taken to furnish help when needed. In fact, 
any Christian work, from the furnishing of a basket 
of flowers for the pulpit to the support of a mission- 
ary in Africa, may come within the province of this 
society, for, where this agency exists, there will 
always be a compact and Organized band of young 
people to whom, if they are properly guided, such 
work may be intrusted with incalculable benefit to 
themselves and others. 



THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 89 

It is too soon, as yet, with modesty, to say much of 
gopcl results which have been accomplished by this 
organization, though very many pleasant things have 
come to our ears. We are only girding on the har- 
ness, and we boast not ourselves as he that putteth 
it off. There are no means of making an accurate 
enumeration, but there must now be several hundred 
societies called by the same name, and with the same 
general constitution, scattered all over the country, 
and in nearly all denominations. 

We should like to give in detail scores of letters 
we have received, so full are they of good cheer and 
enthusiasm, thankfulness for past blessings, and hope- 
ful zeal for the future. Many report numerous con- 
versions and large accessions to the churches with 
which they are connected. 

Others report quickened interest among the young 
Christians already connected with the church. Others, 
still, tell of the increasing confidence of older church 
members in youthful piety. 

Several churches where this plan has been adopted, 
which had before received no additions for years, 
have of late received very considerable accessions 
to their working forces from among the young. A 
conference of these societies has been held in Port- 
land, and a permanent organization effected. This 
conference has no ambitious designs, but simply 
hopes to bring the representatives of the different 
societies in the same vicinity together once a year, 
to talk over affairs of mutual interest, and to enable 
the young people, by means of circular letters and 



90 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

in other ways, to make helpful suggestions one to 
another, in regard to methods of work, proved useful 
by experience. 

While preparing this little book we have been 
pursued by a fear of seeming to assume more knowl- 
edge upon this subject of Christian nurture than our 
brethren, or of seeming to ride a hobby in advocating 
the Society of Christian Endeavor. We wish to dis- 
claim any such intentions. We believe that this is 
one step in the right direction. We would claim 
nothing more. There is a chance for indefinite en- 
largement and extension of the plan. There is a 
chance for the exercise of different gifts, and for the 
play of peculiarities of disposition and training. Cir- 
cumstances and surroundings will modify the plans 
suggested, and will make each organization different 
in some respect from every other. 

The details of organization may vary indefinitely, 
but with the two essentials — weekly recommitment 
on the part of all the young disciples to their Master, 
and constant watchfulness and oversight on the part 
of the pastor and older Christians — no such society 
can wholly fail of accomplishing good. 

We pray and hope for the day when some special 
agency for Christian nurture shall be established in 
every church, so that our earthly Jerusalem may be 
full of boys and girls. We hope and pray and labor 
that the children of the coming generation may be 
trained by the church, for the church, in the church. 



APPENDIX. 



91 



APPENDIX. 

Children and Public Worship. — The Veneration of the Ancient 
Jews for their Temple. — The Statistics about Church- 
going. — Why are not the Children in the Pews? — Testi- 
mony of Representative Christian Men of Portland concern- 
ing early Church-going. — What this Testimony teaches. 

To win Boys and Girls to Public Worship, — First, Understand 
them. Second, Be manly. Third, Present the Youth's Side 
of Truth. Fourth, Give a new Bent to much of the Home 
Life. Fifth, Modify many prevailing Theories regarding the 
Conversion of Children. Sixth, Continue the Revision of 
much Sunday-School Effort. Seventh, Appreciate the joy- 
ous Hopefulness of a Church full of Children. 

The question of the attendance of children upon 
public worship is such a vital question, and is so 
nearly related to the subject of the preceding pages, 
that we feel moved to devote a chapter to its con- 
sideration. The following facts and deductions, first 
presented by the author in a sermon to his own 
people, were published in the Christian Union, were 
thence copied into other religious papers, and are 
reproduced in the hope that tne facts here collated, 
gathered from the citizens of one community, may 
suggest to the people of many communities some of 
the causes and some of the remedies for the falling 
off in attendance upon public worship. 



92 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

We have preserved the homiletical and personal 
form in which these thoughts were first cast, as more 
direct and pointed. 

" Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the 
house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, 
and we will walk in his paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the 
law, and the word of God from Jerusalem." — Is. ii. 3. 

I wish I could give you some little idea of the en- 
thusiastic love and veneration with which the Jews 
regarded their ancient Temple. It was the centre of 
the world to them. There was no glory, no beauty, 
no grace, which did not dwell within its sacred walls. 
It was an honor to the highest dignitary in all the 
land to step even within its outer vestibule ; while 
within the mysteries of its holy of holies, not the 
proudest or mightiest monarch that the world ever 
saw was allowed to set foot. David himself declared, 
when in the zenith of his power, that he, the king, 
coveted the place of a door-keeper in the house of 
God. "I was glad," he said again, — and notice what 
an apparently trivial thing, according to our modern 
notions, he was glad about, — "I was glad," not when 
I conquered my enemies and won a great battle or 
was firmly established upon my throne, but when, with 
the band of pilgrims I approached Jerusalem and the 
Temple ; " when they said unto me, Let us go into the 
house of the Lord," — let us go to church. 

Times surely have wonderfully, not to say wofully 
changed since David sang and Isaiah prophesied. 
Now about the last thing that most men rejoice in is 



APPENDIX. 93 

an invitation to go to church. When our legislators 
come together at Washington, there are a thousand 
applicants for door-keeper of Congress, but I have 
never heard any very ardent aspiration for the office 
of door-keeper in the house of the Lord. 

Numerous counts and estimates in which the 
churches have indulged of late seem to show conclu- 
sively that the masses do not go to church. The re- 
porter has been through the Chicago and Cincinnati 
churches and those of other large cities, pencil and 
note-book in hand, and has found but very few of 
them more than one quarter or one third full, and has 
estimated, if I remember rightly, that less than one 
sixth of the Protestant population of those cities are 
regular church-goers. In New England and in the 
country, doubtless, the proportion of church-goers to 
the population is larger ; but even here the regular 
attendants on the house of God are often in a pitiable 
minority. 

This is not a local evil. Our friends across the 
sea are agitating the same question, and attempting 
to stem the same evil. The statistics of seventy 
cities and districts of England and Wales, in which 
the aggregate population is over three and one half 
millions, show that the actual church-goers number 
only a trifle over a million, — considerably less than 
one third of the population ; and even this proves to be 
a higher ratio than was expected. Take the country 
through, the sitting accommodation of the churches 
in the Old Country is not equal to the wants of one 
half the people, and less than one half of that is used. 



94 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

So notorious have these facts become, the world 
over, that some point is given to the exaggerated sar- 
casm of that new light in the infidel world, Mr. Miln, 
who, having tried many churches in turn, now seeks 
to decry all churches. I say some point is given to 
his strained sarcasm when he says, " Those only attend 
prayer meetings who wish to be alone." 

"We know," he continues, "that the churches, 
which should be thronged with eager worshippers, 
are left half empty, unless indeed some unusual per- 
son or cause serves to evoke a spasm of curiosity. 
This apathy is not confined to any one circle, individ- 
ual, sect, or church. The Presbyterians feel it, and 
have recently sent a commission through the churches 
of that sect to ascertain and remove, if possible, its 
cause. The Methodists feel it, and are found discuss- 
ing ways and means for its removal. The Congre- 
gationalists confess the same lethargy. As to the 
Episcopalians, so poorly are their churches attended, 
that only the most ingenious usher can spread a con- 
gregation out to look a respectable audience." 

But it is more profitable for us to look still nearer 
home. A little more than a year ago, a careful and 
accurate count was made by one of our citizens, in all 
the churches of Portland, and he found that whereas 
there were in all our Protestant churches sittings for 
16,175 °f our 25,000 Protestants, only 8,021 people, all 
told, were found at the preaching services throughout 
the entire day, or in the proportion of less than one 
in three of our Protestant population. But the most 
startling branch of his statistics related to the nam- 



APPENDIX. 95 

ber of children in these churches. In all these twenty- 
seven churches there were only 736 children under 
fourteen years of age. That, I say, is the most start- 
ling and significant part of these statistics, — that out 
of all the thousands of Protestant children who throng 
our public schools every day of the week, only 736 
were found with their parents in the pews on Sunday. 

To bring the matter still nearer home : In the 
nine Congregational churches of our city there were 
present that day 1,789 people all told, an average of a 
trifle less than 200 to each church; while of this num- 
ber only 248 were children under fourteen years of 
age, an average of only 27 to each church. 

In the Sabbath schools of these nine Congrega- 
tional churches are 2,100 persons, and presumably a 
very large proportion of them are children. Then 
only about one seventh of the number of children in 
the Sabbath schools of these churches attended the 
church service. 

Now, to what do these statistics point us ? Just this, 
I think : that right here do we find the principal and 
most alarming cause of empty pews and indifference 
to church-going. The children are not required to 
go with their parents. Their religious training is 
relegated more and more to the Sunday school. 
The great family pews, filled with six, eight, or a 
dozen children, from the little fair-haired tot of two 
years up to the manly elder brother or womanly 
elder sister, are no longer found ; partly because such 
families do not exist in large numbers (more is the 
pity for the welfare of our land), and partly because, 



96 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

while the parents may be at church to save the 
respectability of the family, the chilren are anywhere 
and everywhere else. They are out riding or walking, 
or are sleeping at home, or reading a flash newspaper 
or an exciting novel. 

We in this generation are just beginning to feel the 
evil effects of this loose family government and home 
training in regard to church-going. The generation 
immediately preceding ours slackened the reins, and 
the empty pews in many churches show that the 
young colts have run away. What shall we expect 
in the generation which is to follow ours, when, as in 
many cases, the reins have been thrown entirely away 
and the colts allowed to roam at their own sweet 
will ? This, I say, — and I do not think the position 
can be successfully combated, — is the great cause of 
the lack of attendance at our churches ; and this 
cause, unless the evil is checked, will decimate our 
churches in the future. 

I am fully aware that many other causes have en- 
tered in to thin the congregations ; but what I say 
is that this is the predominant and overwhelmingly 
the most significant cause of this change in the 
habits of our people. 

In order to test this influence of the early habits 
of church-going upon the future lives of Christian 
men as fully as I could in our own city of Portland, 
I have, within the past fortnight, sent out about fifty 
postal cards to various representative, Christian men 
in our different churches. The card I sent read as 
follows : — 



APPENDIX. 97 

"Dear Sz'r, — Desiring to learn if the present decline in church 
attendance, so often complained of, is a reaction from Puritani- 
cal strictness in the past, as is frequently alleged, or is due to 
laxity of parental authority, will you be so kind as to tell me, — 

" i. Whether in early life you were required to attend church 
regularly ? 

" 2. If so, did such compulsion render church-going irksome 
or repulsive to you ? 

"Any other facts from personal experience, or from that of 
others bearing upon this point, will be gratefully received. I 
have addressed this same inquiry to a number of the Christian 
men of Portland, hoping that by the answers some light may be 
thrown on this important subject." 

Of course I was able to get the opinions of only a 
small number of the representative Christian men of 
the city ; there were hundreds of others who could 
just as well have answered these questions, but, in 
order to reach a definite class, I sent my inquiries 
to the deacons of the Congregational and Baptist 
churches, and to a few of the prominent men in other 
churches whose names were given me. For the 
most part I went entirely outside of my own church, 
and did not ask those men whose early training I 
was acquainted with ; so that, so far as it went, this 
was a fair and impartial test. You will notice also, 
from the wording of my questions, that I attempted 
not to show any bias of opinion in my queries. 

Of these fifty men, more or less, of whom I have 
asked these questions, forty-five kindly responded. 
Of these forty-five who replied, four were Episco- 
palians, five were Methodists, three were Free Bap- 
tists, eight were Baptists, and twenty-five were 



98 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

Congregationalists. Of these forty-five men, embra- 
cing a large proportion of the officers in our churches, 
three were not required to go to church when young, 
and forty-two were. Of these three who were not 
required to go, two went of their own accord. 
Two others of my correspondents make a distinction 
between being required to go and being solemnly and 
earnestly urged to go ; that is, between physical and 
moral compulsion. But that kind of compulsion came 
within the intent of my inquiry. Where it is the 
regularly expected thing for children to attend church, 
as much as to attend school, that is the best kind of 
compulsion. 

Of those forty-five, then, from whom I have re- 
ceived answers, forty-two were required to go to 
church as children ; two were not required to go, but 
nevertheless went. 

Forty-two did not consider church-going irksome 
or repulsive ; one did consider it irksome, but not 
repulsive ; one considered it irksome, but not because 
of the compulsion ; and one did not go, and so of course 
did not find church attendance repulsive. 

So you see the testimony of these forty-five repre- 
sentative Christian men, obtained without collusion 
or knowledge as to the end to which their testimony 
would be put, almost with unanimity tells that their 
early training required church attendance, and that 
such attendance did not drive them away from 
church, even for a time. 

In view of these facts, what becomes of the thread- 
bare and sickly plea, i( I am afraid to require any 



APPENDIX. 99 

religious duties of my child lest he acquire a distaste 
for them " ? Just exactly as sensible is the plea, " I 
am afraid to require any ablutions of my child lest 
he acquire a distaste for a clean face." 

Now, what do these statistics show us in regard to 
the probable effect of church-going upon the boys 
and girls of to-day ? 

So far as this testimony goes, we learn that the 
chances of the boys and girls of the present genera- 
tion becoming eminent and useful Christians are as 
forty-four to one in favor of those who attend church, 
as forty-two to three in favor of those who are required 
to attend ; and the chances that they will be repelled 
and disgusted by such requirement are only as one 
to forty-five. 

Or, to put the matter in still another way, so far 
as these testimonies prove anything, they prove that 
of those who become particularly eminent and useful 
in the church in mature life, nearly ninety-eight per 
cent went to church regularly as boys, that ninety-four 
per cent of them were required to go, and that ninety- 
six per cent were not repelled from church, even for 
a little while, by such requirement. 

That: is what these answers teach. Perhaps some 
one will say, "You have too few facts to generalize 
upon"; but people and cities are much the same 
everywhere. Portland is probably neither much 
better nor worse than other cities of its size, and, 
beyond a doubt, what is true here is true elsewhere. 
I wish I could read you some letters which I have 
received, for many of my correspondents have kindly 



IOO THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

answered at considerable length and have given me 
suggestions which I would be glad to lay before you, 
if time permitted. 

Some of these letters are pathetic in their venera- 
tion of the loved parents by whose side these gray- 
haired men once walked to the house of God. One 
says, "My first recollection of church-going was 
with my mother of blessed memory, when I was from 
six to eight years of age, which was always a pleasure 
and delight." Another says, "At the age of four, my 
good Christian mother took me by the hand and led 
me to the old Federal Street Church. Did I ever con- 
sider church-going repulsive ? No ; most emphatical- 
ly. I have always felt how great a debt of gratitude 
I owe my parents for their early Christian training." 
Another who was required to go to church three 
times a day says, " Being required to attend regu- 
larly, I acquired thereby an appetite for it, that 
nothing else save eternal attendance in the great con- 
gregation of the blessed, up yonder, can ever satisfy." 
Two more say, that though trained up with all the rigor 
of Scotch Presbyterianism, church-going soon became 
and always continued a pleasure to them. Another 
tells me, " If there is anything I thank my parents 
for, it is that they made this requirement of me." 

Another says, " I no more expected to stay away 
from church services than from school. The habit 
thus formed in my early home I found so strong when 
I came to the city that I could not stay away from 
church." Another writes, "The habit of church- 
going became so fixed that, apart from religious prin- 



APPENDIX. 101 

ciple, I could never connect the idea of anything 
pleasant with Sabbath breaking." Another tells us 
that " he early learned that God required him to go to 
His house, and that He required his parents to have 
him go, thus the reasonableness of the requirement 
was seen and felt." Still another says, " Church- 
going became a fixed habit and a necessity as much 
as daily meals." 

There is a singular uniformity in the testimony 
upon this point. "We never thought of going any- 
where else than to church on Sunday," says one. 
" I never thought there was any other way to do," 
says a second. " No compulsion was necessary ; we 
expected always to go," says a third. "Was it 
irksome? I never thought of such a thing," says a 
fourth. 

Most of these men, when children, never thought 
whether they were compelled to go to church or not; 
it was so much the regular order of the family, that 
any other course would have seemed unreasonable 
and wrong to them. A very prominent business 
man of another communion than ours writes, " I 
should as soon have expected my parents to say that 
I might stay at home from school as a reward, as that 
I might remain at home from meetings as a similar 
agreeable and pleasant thing." Ah, that of which 
these letters so often speak is the best kind of com- 
pulsion, not the iron hand dragging the child to 
church, but the sweet expectation, the natural order 
of the household, the unquestioned habit of the fam- 
ily, the propriety of which was never doubted. Where 



102 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

such expectation and habit are the order of the house- 
hold and the father and mother lead the way, saying 
" Come," and not " Go," there is never a need of 
sterner compulsion. That is the way in which the 
vast majority of the Christian men of Portland, and 
presumably of all similar cities, were trained up for 
the responsible places they fill. If there are to be 
such men in the future they will be trained in the 
same way. 

In this connection we are glad to present to our 
readers the opinions of Rev. J. G. Merrill, of St. 
Louis, who has been successful, as few ministers 
have been, in securing an interested hearing from 
the boys and girls of his congregation, and who has 
earned the right to speak with authority upon boys 
and girls at public worship. He writes : — 

" To secure the public worship that will bless our 
boys and girls we need : — 

"First. To understand boy and girl life. Some one 
has said that among the greatest discoveries of our 
inventive age the greatest has been the discovery of 
children. A man does not need to be forty years 
old to recall the time when childhood and youth 
were practically ignored by authors and artists, 
preachers and poets. Boys and girls are a variable 
quantity. To understand a boy of ten 'years is not 
to know him at fourteen, to know a lass at eight is 
not to know her at thirteen. The mental and moral 
change, undergone between eleven and fifteen, is no 
less marked than the physical change during the 
same period. Many a quiet lad enters this periou 



APPENDIX. 103 

bashful and comes out boisterous, or changes from a 
noisy boy to a sedate youth. Many a miss changes 
in these few months from a coy maiden to a flirt, or 
from a rude girl to a matronly one. Young folks do 
not understand themselves at this time of life, and 
are usually very sure that no one else understands 
them. 

" He who can help humanity over the years from 
seven to seventeen can guide the race. He must not 
fail, as a help to secure this result, to remember his 
own boyhood or girlhood. " Only that man in whom 
the child heart hath not died can successfully teach 
the young." A child heart need not die, for, as the 
prophet says, "Behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing 
and her people a joy : for the child shall die a hun- 
dred years old." 

" Second. Another prerequisite in the solution of 
our problem is that he who would win boys and girls 
must be manly. A boy who cannot tell his letters 
can read men. There is something within a health- 
ful boy or girl which makes them attracted by strength 
and intrepidity. They would rather be driven than 
coaxed, but prefer above either of these to be strongly 
led. 

"A nice young man, with a sweet lisp, hair parted in 
the middle and a waxed mustache, is more in his place 
in a dancing-school than in the pulpit, with the boys 
and girls looking him through. A fussy old man, 
who is never so happy as when he is toasting his 
embroidered slipper over the grate, can do more at 
sewing societies than among the rising generation. 



104 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

It was the rough and ready Peter who was bidden, 
1 Feed my lambs.' 

" Third. To win boys and girls to public worship 
one must present the youth's side of truth. Boys and 
girls need the same truths that their seniors do ; no 
greater mistake is made than by those who think 
that talk to children should be childish. Men have 
fired off their old smooth bores, with a ponderous 
polysyllabic sound, until the short, sharp crack of a 
monosyllabic rifle seems to them no gun at all. 

" It is astonishing how few thoughts there are, worth 
the thinking, which cannot be put in such a way 
that a child can have thoughts concerning them. 
It is humiliating to take some of our finely rounded 
periods and see how little there is left of them when 
the wind is let out of them. The thoughts which 
Jesus thought more than any man of history, think- 
ing and speaking as he did, are best expressed in 
words and sentences such as a quick-minded child 
would use. 

"As a rule, the thoughts which if properly expressed 
are beyond the apprehension, not to say comprehen- 
sion, of bright boys and girls are illy adapted to help 
the adults of our congregations. Longfellow tells 
the truth thus : — 

1 Friendly the teacher stood, like an angel of light there among 

them, 
And to the children explained the holy, the highest, in few 

words, 
Thorough, yet simple and clear, for sublimity always is simple, 
Both in sermon and song, a child can seize on its meaning.' 



APPENDIX. 105 

" We of the pulpit need to remember the order to 
our brave forefathers on Bunker Hill, ' Fire low.' 
Shots fired high have no more powder or lead ; 
they are vastly more valuable for noise than for exe- 
cution. 

"Fourth. To secure the children at church there 
must be a new bent to much home life. Public 
worship will rarely include the children as habitual 
attendants so long as it is the prevailing fashion for 
parents to obey their children. 

"There is enough left of total depravity to make it 
safe to say that if the average child has his own way,- 
attendance upon church will at the best be spas- 
modic, perhaps but little more irregular than would 
be attention to music or assigned tasks of any sort ; 
but enough so, in all these matters, to make it desira- 
ble for the superior will to reside in one who, from a 
wider outlook than is possible for children, has learned 
the value of the more serious matters of life in the 
formation of character. Moreover, it is unworthy of 
a parent, who ought to understand children, to sug- 
gest that a child, able to go to school five or six 
hours on other days, is not able to attend God's 
house two or three hours on the Lord's day. And, 
provided parents have the slightest comprehension 
of the worth of religious instruction in relation to a 
soul born for two worlds, there will grow up in the 
household an irresistible yet loving force which will 
lead the youth to as little expect to go without his 
Sunday dinner as to stay away from church and 
Sunday school. 



IC-6 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

"Fifth. To gain the object before us we shall need 
to modify many prevailing theories in regard to the 
conversion of children. Among the evils connected 
with modern religious efforts none is more wide- 
spread and ruinous than that which ignores Christian 
nurture. Boys and girls who become Christians 
normally become Christians gradually. Of course 
there is such a thing as regeneration, and there is 
a moment when it takes place, but He who knows 
all about it, and the only One who does know all 
about it, says that its movements are like those of 
the wind, whose sound we hear, whose effects we 
perceive, but the manner of whose coming we do not 
and cannot tell. 

" Is it not time in this age of the Christian church 
to believe that generation assists regeneration? To 
regard a religious bent, that has been handed down 
from Grandmother Eunice to Mother Lois, and thence 
to the youthful Timothy, as not only to be possible 
but to be expected? Shall a child be expected to 
have no better start for the kingdom because his 
father and mother are children of the King ? 

"SixtJi. We must continue the revision which is 
going on in respect of our Sunday schools. Had not 
certain tendencies been arrested, it would have been 
impossible to have saved the church from destruc- 
tion at the hands of an institution which ought to 
be and is destined to be its choicest ally. 

" The peril was in affording the young a kind of 
religion which could not satisfy them beyond the 
age of youth, and at the same time destroyed all 



APPENDIX. 107 

relish for the religion which meets the wants of 
manhood and womanhood. The wild life of" many 
a Sunday-school scholar comes to resent a religion 
which insists upon things being done ' decently and 
in order.' The sensational preaching, which is so 
greatly relished to-day, is partly in consequence of 
the mental imbecility fostered in Sunday schools, 
destitute alike of discipline and scholarship, in which 
the children were tickled by jingling songs, petted 
with prizes and picnics, fed upon books nauseating 
to a healthful mind, guided by those whose whole 
aim was to play upon the feelings of those for whom 
no thorough intellectual training or forceful character 
getting was ever dreamed. 

"It is a happy omen for the generation coming on 
that men are learning not to expect strong manhood 
and womanhood save as it results from a well-disci- 
plined childhood. 

"Seventh. To have the boys and girls at public 
worship there must grow up in our hearts an appre- 
ciation of the joyous hopefulness of a church full of 
children. Blessed is the man that hath his quiver 
full of them is no truer of the father of a family than 
it is of a true pastor of a church. ' A Christ-loving 
pastor,' said Dr. Tyng, 'is a child-loving pastor.' 
Hawthorne remarked, ' If I value myself upon any- 
thing, it is in having a smile that the children love.' 
Dr. Doddridge replied to those who criticised him for 
laboring so greatly for the youth, ' I had rather feed 
the lambs of Christ than rule a kingdom.' 

" Our Lord said, ' Suffer the children and forbid 



108 THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 

them not to come unto me.' The truth is that the 
only child religion in the world is Christ's religion, 
and, thanks to the religion of Jesus, there are more 
joyous young hearts beating on our globe now than at 
any other hour the world has seen. 

" These young hearts will not .be young to-morrow. 
They are, amid appliances such as the world never 
afforded before, preparing themselves to shape the 
future of the world. 

" The simple question before us is a fairly tremen- 
dous one, is the church shaping this plastic force ? 

" God has ordained but one way of applying the 
gospel to the minds of men. It is by the preaching of 
the word. Other measures are allies of this, the great 
force to win the world to Christ. Whomsoever, 
therefore, we may neglect to bring under the in- 
fluence of God's house and God's word, let it not be 
the boys and girls." 



